HERA Joint Research Programme Uses of the Past

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Organizational Unit

Publications

Publication . MAIA, Maria Helena

The Iberian Peninsula was mostly rural, poor and archaic until very recently, with only a few cities whose inhabitants lived a substantially different reality from the rest of the population. This provides a background of supposed authenticity of the roots of national architectural identity with direct effects on architectural choices. One of the possible examples to understand this process is the experience of inner colonization, so crucial both in Portugal and in Spain, and the actions taken by the authorities in charge. These parallel experiences provide us with an opportunity to gain a thorough understanding of the relationship between architectural identity and the rural world. In both countries, the 1940s and 1950s were characterized by major infrastructural interventions in the territory. The modernization of Portuguese and Spanish countryside included inner colonization schemes, implementing the “agrarian utopia” purported by both Franco and Salazar. Many modern architects played a part in this process. Rural settlements across the Iberian Peninsula clearly show different points of balance between elements of modernity and references to vernacular architecture. For this reason, they offer an ideal testing ground to question how the local architectural identity was constructed.

2018-08Conference object

Open access

A colonização interna portuguesa e as novas paisagens rurais, o caso de Milagres

Publication . Sara Mónico, LOPES; Pinto, Miguel Moreira; Couto, Joana

As políticas de colonização interna tiveram um papel fundamental na afirmação dos Estados e na transformação dos espaços rurais. Em Portugal, a colonização, em terrenos baldios e incultos, teve como objetivos incrementar a produção agrícola, travar a proletarização e incentivar a pequena agricultura familiar. Embora venha a ser proposta no final do século XIX, a sua concretização só acontece a partir de 1926, com a instalação da Colónia Agrícola de Milagres, no concelho de Leiria. As obras de colonização interna produziram novas paisagens que constituem hoje um património único, apesar de tudo pouco conhecido e divulgado. Com este artigo propomo-nos abordar o tema no contexto nacional e apresentar alguma pesquisa que tem sido desenvolvida no âmbito do projeto de investigação europeu: MODSCAPES, Modernist Reinventions of the Rural Landscape. São nossos objetivos contextualizar a temática da colonização interna realizada no quadro político-ideológico do Estado Novo, apresentar alguma investigação feita sobre as colónias agrícolas – designadamente sobre o caso de Milagres, e mostrar a importância destas paisagens agrárias enquanto elementos do património cultural dos Estados. Em termos metodológicos, a pesquisa fundamenta-se na análise documental, em informação recolhida em arquivos e teses produzidas no contexto académico. As nossas conclusões preliminares não deixam de ter em conta a escala modesta da ação colonizadora empreendida pelo Estado português se comparada, por exemplo, com o que sucedeu em Espanha e Itália. Muito aquém do inicialmente previsto e desejado, a construção de apenas 7 colonias agrícolas não pode ser vista senão como um processo de experimentação e ensaio, mas que acabou por nos deixar um legado material e imaterial importante do ponto de vista paisagístico, do ponto de vista cultural e identitário, do ponto de vista da formação de uma estrutura tecnocrática e de uma agenda científica nacional, promotora de novos saberes e conhecimento.

2017-12Book part

Open access

Tradition and modernity in the Portuguese Inner Colonisation: the laboratorial case of Pegões

Publication . PRISTA, Marta Lalanda

The intertwining of tradition and modernity is a rooted discussion within the Portuguese history of architecture since the mid-twentieth century. From then on, the dichotomisation of erudite and vernacular architectures, urban and rural cultures and settings, nationalist and universalistic values, seems to have been debated and reviewed. This paper aims to contribute to such de-essentialisation processes by focusing on the Portuguese Estado Novo project of inner colonisation conducted by the Junta de Colonização Interna (1936-1974), and examining the dialogues and frictions between its traditional and modern ideals and accomplishments as spatialised in one very particular colony – Pegões. On the one hand, the paper ponders upon the Portuguese colonisation’s neo-physiocratic basis, locating the tradition-modernity binomial in the intent to modernise the agrarian world while perpetuating its traditional lifestyle, simultaneously fostering an economic development, social control and national identity. On the other hand, the paper draws upon the laboratorial colony of Pegões, which was the first, the biggest and the only one built in Southern Portugal, to more thickly analyse the colonisation’s politics and fulfilments, and its understanding and uses of traditional and modernist ideals, aesthetics and representations. Special attention is given to the dialectics between political and economic agencies, social negotiations, embodied experiences, and meanings and affections, by looking into the official-written history of the colony and emotional-sensory memory of its settlers. This approach results from the work carried out within the scope of MODSCAPES research project (funded by HERA Uses of the Past), notably in what concerns its research line on the memories and perceptions of European colonisation policies, schemes and resulting landscapes.

2018-10-25Conference object

Open access

Modern Architecture in the (re)Making of History. Schools and Museums in Greece

Publication . PALLINI, Cristina

Challenging the long-established idea of the Mediterranean as the cradle of modern architecture, this contribution argues that due consideration should be given to moments of profound change, thereby splitting the Mediterranean into its fragments. We may thus restore to its extraordinary cities the many and varied architectural traditions that were able to nurture and blend: the much-debated mediterraneità (Mediterraneity) turns out to be far less ‘monolithic’ in its expression. Along this line of thoughts, schools and museums built in Greece from 1923 to the aftermath of WWII may well reveal the role of architecture, when called upon to express the founding values of a collective identity. The dialectic between tradition and innovation, eclecticism and modernism, uncovers its meaning case by case.

2018-10-25Conference object

Open access

Italian Modern Architecture Between Rurality and Monumentality. The case study of the Italian New Towns as an experimental territory for the Modern Movement in Italy

Publication . MARGIONE, Emanuela

During the 30’s, the Fascist Party achieves its most significant territorial project: the reclamation of the Pontine Marshes and the construction of New Towns. In the same years starts the debate between modernity and tradition, that will characterize the whole history of modern Italian architecture, and the Fascist party obtains its highest approval trying to breathe life into a new Italian society full of new behaviours. This opens a new parenthesis within the debate of modern Italian architecture that not only has to find its own definition but must also be translated as State’s art. In this scenario, the founding cities of the Agro Pontino became the experimental territory for the Italian architects of the Modern era. The pivotal architect of the New Towns was Oriolo Frezzotti, chosen directly by Mussolini to build in 1932 the first new town, Latina, with a rural character and then in 1935, Pontinia where the architect abandoned the vernacular style to leave space to pure geometric shapes. So Frezzotti, in just two years, changed his language almost drastically, abandoning the architectural forms linked to the traditional rural style and approaching the "horizontal lines", symbol of architecture for human, and the "vertical lines" symbol of dictatorial monumentalism (Zevi 1950, 167) that will characterize the modern Italian architecture. To give the impetus for this transformation was the experience that Frezzotti made in 1934 collaborating on the project for Sabaudia known as the city of Italian rationalism. In light of this, this paper intends to analyse these urban artefacts understood as a tool capable of returning a material history of modern Italian architecture. So, through the urban and architectural analysis of the New towns, so through the study of the debate between rurality and monumentality, this paper intends to give a generic picture of modern Italian architecture.

2018-10-25Conference object

Open access