CONTEXT

The major cities in Portugal, particularly Lisbon, are currently experiencing a profound crisis in access to housing, similar to many other countries in Europe and worldwide. Between the 1950s and 1980s, the Portuguese government outlined housing plans aimed at eradicating illegally established neighborhoods in Lisbon and providing adequate housing for all citizens, with a special emphasis on the population facing the greatest economic struggles. From the 1990s onwards, with the beginning of liberal policies in the country, the construction of new housing essentially became a monetary product managed by private entities, and Public Housing Policies became residual.

OBJECTIVE

The “Habitar Lisboa” Exhibition, curated by architect Marta Sequeira, aimed to create a forum for discussing the Housing Policies of the Portuguese government in Lisbon, spanning 50 years. From the period preceding the Revolution in April 1974 to the present day.

The Garagem Sul of the CCB (Centro Cultural de Belém), originally a car park, was later transformed into an Architecture Exhibition Center – Garagem Sul.

The setup of an exhibition focused on “Habitar”(Dwelling) raised some questions from the outset that became central in the design of the exhibition project. How to transform a garage space into a place that encompasses some of the words we typically use when talking about “Habitar,” such as comfort, neighborhood, sharing, common spaces, backyard, intimacy, private, public?

PROJECT

The proposal involved constructing a wooden structure that seeks to materialize the idea of an urban block, a single-story one, opening both to the exterior and an interior courtyard space. Posters with slogans taken from protests advocating housing policies over the past 50 years were placed on the exterior. Inside, a large space was created for debates and forums.

The autonomous wooden structure provided acoustic and thermal comfort to the 1800 m2 garage space. The modules recreated cells with an area similar to an apartment. Within these cells, were exhibited the most relevant housing projects built in Lisbon from the 1970s to the present day, ongoing projects of new housing programs, informative data, statistics, and testimonials from architects, landscape architects, sociologists, and geographers.

The exhibition system was designed with the preservation of factory dimensions in mind, so that all the pieces constituting the walls, floor, exhibition supports, lamps – all wooden elements of the exhibition – could be disassembled and returned to the factory for future reuse.