Arquitectura Aqui – Community, Proximity, Action: Collective Use Equipment in Portugal and Spain 1939-1985, with Ricardo Costa Agarez

On 18 November 2025, Ricardo Costa Agarez will present and discuss the Arquitectura Aqui initiative (https://arquitecturaaqui.eu/) at Iscte – Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, Building 4, Auditorium 306, at 6 P.M., marking the conclusion of the first semester of the Doctoral Programme in Architecture of Contemporary Metropolitan Territories 2025/2026.

We all live, work, study and enjoy ourselves in spaces about which we know little. If we know more and better, and if this knowledge is built collectively – jointly by those who investigate the history and architecture of these spaces and by those who created and currently or formerly enjoyed them – we will be able to contribute to making informed decisions about which buildings and complexes we can maintain, reuse, and substitute. By knowing more, we can decide better how to update and perfect this heritage of collective enjoyment.

The session will be particularly dedicated to discussing ways of strengthening the relationship between academic work and the sustainability of the built environment, highlighting the responsibility of architecture and all those involved in the formation of its epistemological basis in this matter.

The Arquitectura Aqui initiative is the outcome of two research projects: ReARQ.IB – Built Environment Knowledge for Resilient, Sustainable Communities: Understanding Everyday Modern Architecture and Urban Design in the Iberian Peninsula (1939-1985), based at DINÂMIA’CET-Iscte, and ArchNeed – The Architecture of Need: Community Facilities in Portugal (1945-1985), based at CIDEHUS – Centro Interdisciplinar de História, Culturas e Sociedades (Universidade de Évora).

Ricardo Costa Agarez is an architect (1996) and a historian of architecture and cities. He is currently a Principal Investigator at Iscte – Instituto Universitário de Lisboa. He is the Principal Investigator for the projects ReARQ.IB and ArchNeed, and co-editor-in-chief of the scientific journal ABE Journal-Architecture Beyond Europe. As a researcher, his projects seek to integrate architecture, construction, cultural studies, and the social and human sciences. He specialises in the history and theory of architecture and urbanism of the 19th and 20th centuries, having written and published on: architecture and national and regional identities; phenomena of dissemination, hybridism, and transfer of architectural knowledge and practices between contexts; multi-family housing; architecture of public functions; architecture and philanthropy; alternative forms of knowledge expression in architecture; and architectural cultures in bureaucracy.