'Ways of Inhabiting and Perceiving an Álvaro Siza House' – by Sandra Marques Pereira, Tânia Lemos, Idalina Machado and Leandro Arez

Photography by Pedro Ferreira

The Routlegde Handbook of Architecture and Anthropology has published the chapter 'Ways of Inhabiting and Perceiving an Álvaro Siza House', co-authored by DINÂMIA'CET-Iscte researchers Sandra Marques Pereira and Tânia Lemos, in collaboration with Idalina Machado and Leandro Arez.

This study examines residents’ ways of inhabiting and their perceptions of the particularities of the Bouça Neighbourhood in Porto, designed by Álvaro Siza. It does so through a qualitative approach using methodological tools from both the social sciences and architecture – interviews and visual documentation of inhabited dwellings – to generate a complementary analysis of discourse and spatiality, practices and the symbolic.  

This chapter begins by reflecting from an interdisciplinary perspective on the nature of Bouça focusing on three aspects: first, its history, originating during the dictatorship but emerging post-revolution (1974) within a housing programme that is still celebrated as the ideal meeting point of architecture and the people; second, today’s coexistence of heterogeneous social groups (working and middle class) that is the result of Bouça’s construction spanning across different time periods; and third, that the project is designed by an internationally renowned architect.  

This chapter then discusses today’s residents’ perceptions of otherness and offers three portraits of ways of inhabiting, representing different social positions, trajectories, and life projects. We conclude with a brief reflection on the dialogue between the social sciences and architecture triggered by this research. 

More info here.