Our Present is our Future Past

rethinking heritage through our contemporary memory

In the 1950s there was
already a lot of
movement around the
architects community
about the preservation
of Popular Architecture,
and Portugal was no
stranger to this need to
preserve a vernacular
heritage that was bound
to disappear. One of
the reasons behind this
concern was the
Modernisms idea that
all past should be
forgotten in order to
create a new
architecture suitable to
new needs of new
people.
Le Modulor | Le Corbusier_1948

'Arquitetura Popular em Portugal'|Book Cover_1961

(2004 reprint)

Popular House proposals | in Raul Lino's 'Our

House'_1918

In the Estremadura
region, more precisely in
Leirias surroundings,
one of the found types
consisted in a poorly
built adobe house,
characterized by a
closed porch in the
front, composed by
several volumes built
through time and
according to the owners
needs and possibilities
(harboring dwelling,
cattle and crop sheds),
with very poor
salubrity much
different from the
middle class fantasies of
the fascist regime.
Popular house in Ortigosa/Leiria | sketched upon the
models in 'Arquitetura Popular em Portugal'_1961

These invented
models, consequently
inexistent in the
Portuguese rural
landscape where an
attempt to create a
fake past, and so, as
a reaction,
Arquitetura Popular
em Portugal
(Popular Architecture
in Portugal), a survey
of the countrys
regional popular
architecture was
published, where our
endangered rural
built landscape was
collected and
preserved.

Portugal, however, had

additional concerns,
mainly a fascist regime
that intended to create
a fake past to
Portuguese Popular
and Regional
architecture that
would lead us to
forget the misery in
which common people
survived. For that the
Estado Novo (New
State) made use of
Raul Linos proposals, a
supposed traditional
regional architecture,
made up of middle
class houses profusely
decorated.

Popular house in Ortigosa/Leiria |

'Arquitetura Popular em Portugal'_1961

Portugal |
Estremadura |
Leiria

Thus, popular architecture being

made in the 1950s/1960s was
deliberately ignored as it
corresponded to an intolerable
miscegenation of architecture,
although it was still
architecture without
architects, made for real needs
and eventually composing the
rural landscape of the Leirias
region (in Estremadura).
Although it was still composed
by several volumes, with
different uses, it had a special
feature, that consisted in the
main house, very regular in
shape, symmetrical in its faade
and floor plan with obvious
erudite influences (the
intolerable miscegenation?).

Popular Houses in Alcobaa/Leiria | personal

sketchbook_2001

on site survey | college

degree thesis_2001

But when we talk about landscape and

its features we (they?) tend to forget it
as a whole or a sum, not a series of
disconnected elements and besides
purity and miscegenation the way
these different types occupy the
territory was similar in key features:
their scale, their fragmentation that
could define a whole, their adaptation to
the topography and local materials (even
if no longer adobe, but still the regions
chipped stone using earth as mortar).
And once the previous type disappeared
we were left with a new past that
replaces the old one in contemporary
generations, as they are the elements
that compose our landscape, remember
ancients ways of living and subsistence
and constitute a real heritage, rather
than an imagined (and desired) one.
Popular Houses in Alcobaa/Leiria | photo survey_2001

So, is this past

still to be ignored?
Importing and
reinterpreting
other cultures
features is such an
improper situation
that could
(should) lead us to
forget ones
heritage and
promote our
landscapes built
transformation/
/obliteration? And
if we do, what will
our landscape
made of? Which is
the legacy being
forged nowadays?
Popular Houses in Alcobaa/Leiria based upon Alcobaa's CityHall Licensing Archives| master degree thesis on Architectural Heritage_2006

1960's

Lets move another 55 years further, to 2070: what

will be this generations past? And present? To
the latest question its impossible to answer what
will be fashionable or need at the end of the
century when society moves faster and faster. But
we can preview a hypothetical past: ignoring and
letting disappear our present past wont open way
to the reappearance of the previous one, meaning,
the adobe house with the front closed porch. But
most certainly will open the way to a process of
sedimentation of our present that will become our
future past. A fake one, as we said, capable of
creating fake memories in ones culture and heritage.
A misrepresentation of a (supposed) erudite
influence that never existed. A
regional-portuguese-popular-and-erudite
architecture based upon a fantasy.
Summarizing, a historical lie beyond the material
danger where our present rural landscape
disappears.

Again, some fieldwork: we can

now find a massive single
volume house, indifferent to
the landscape and
topography, abusing of
erudite references in the
multitude of elements that
decorate the housing type:
roofs with various slopes in
various directions like Chinese
pagodas, (a sort of)
greek/roman/neoclassic stone
colonnades supporting
numerous porches, rich
stonework in window frames
and strong colors, all argued
to be traditional but brought
from an inexistent local
tradition, in other words, from
an imagined (desired?) past.
Contemporary Popular Houses in Alcobaa/Leiria | photo survey_2001

Past

Future

Present

2014's

?
Past

Future

Present

2070's

?
Past

Present

Future

So, the presented case study that actually consists in three

different ones: their past (in
the 1900-1960s), our past
(1960- 2015s) and our future
past (2015 and on) - reflects
the need to review some of the
proceedings used to classify and
preserve rural landscape
heritage (preserving valuable
features and/or demising
distressing elements in the
landscape in order to achieve a
major coherence), through a
process that involves social
awareness and an efficient
policy regarding heritage
evaluation and protection
through precise research and
legislation.