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Regionalism, Modernism and Vernacular Tradition in the Architecture of Algarve, Portugal, 1925-1965

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Regionalism, Modernism and Vernacular Tradition in the Architecture of Algarve, Portugal, 1925-1965 Regionalism, modernism and vernacular tradition in the architecture of Algarve, Portugal, 1925-1965 Ricardo Manuel Costa Agarez University College London Ph.D. Volume I 1 I, Ricardo Manuel Costa Agarez, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. 2 Ricardo Agarez | Abstract Abstract This thesis looks at the contribution of real and constructed local traditions to modern building practices and discourses in a specific region, focusing on the case of Algarve, southern Portugal, between 1925 and 1965. By shifting the main research focus from the centre to the region, and by placing a strong emphasis on fieldwork and previously overlooked sources (the archives of provincial bodies, municipalities and architects), the thesis scrutinises canonical accounts of the interaction of regionalism with modernism. It examines how architectural ‘regionalism’, often discussed at a central level through the work of acknowledged metropolitan architects, was interpreted by local practices in everyday building activity. Was there a real local concern with vernacular traditions, or was this essentially a construct of educated metropolitan circles, both at the time and retrospectively? Circuits and agents of influence and dissemination are traced, the careers of locally relevant designers come to light, and a more comprehensive view of architectural production is offered. Departing from conventional narratives that present pre-war regionalism in Portugal as a stereotype-driven, one-way central construct, the creation of a regional built identity for Algarve emerges here as the result of combined local, regional and central agencies, mediated both through concrete building practice and discourses outside architecture. Post-war regionalism appears as more than a sophisticated re-appropriation of vernacular features by cultured architects to overcome the shortcomings of both modernist orthodoxy and official stylistic conservatism: the thesis shows how Algarve’s traditional features allowed modernism to be pragmatically restyled as locally sensitive and keep its fundamentals unquestioned; and the architects’ authority to be reasserted where non-architects dominated. Tradition became the key to architecture’s future. Regionalism, a consistent undercurrent of twentieth-century architecture, resurfaced and was morphed by modernism, with mutual benefit. In Algarve, vernacular tradition and regional agency appear as not mere footnotes in the narrative of modernism, but as part of its main text. 3 Ricardo Agarez | Contents CONTENTS VOLUME I Abbreviations and Acronyms ......................................................................................................................... 7 Acknowledgements........................................................................................................................................... 9 Introduction............................................................................................................................ 11 PART I – The Centre Chapter 1. Regional formulae on vernacular material. Establishing a model for building in Algarve...25 1. “The smallest kingdom.” Particularities of a territory............................................................................................26 Literature, Ethnography, Art...........................................................................................................................27 Human Geography ...........................................................................................................................................31 2. “Exotic, beautiful, oddly modernist.” Early travelogues of Algarve....................................................................40 Chapter 2. Architects on the Algarvian identity: permanence and change .............................................49 1. Seen from the city: Algarve and the South in metropolitan drawing boards......................................................50 Raul Lino and the “smallness of Moorish things”.......................................................................................50 The Andalusian diversion ................................................................................................................................57 Cottinelli Telmo and the Algarvian “simple lines” ......................................................................................59 Induced modernism: Carlos Ramos’s Algarve .............................................................................................61 Algarve goes to Lisbon: Olhão at the 1940 “Mundo Português” exposition..........................................64 2. From inland bucolics to seaside hedonism: the changing brief for tourism and its architecture ....................67 An architectural viewport over almond-blossom fields: the Algarve Pousada .......................................68 “Only just found, not yet lost.” Algarve on the edge of mass tourism ....................................................74 The Sol e Mar case.....................................................................................................................................78 The catch of leisure architecture..............................................................................................................80 3. Revising stereotypes: Algarve in the “Inquérito à Arquitectura Regional Portuguesa” (1945-1961)..............84 Survey or weapon?............................................................................................................................................84 Spanish and Italian antecedents......................................................................................................................88 The uncomfortable vernacular of “Zone 6” (Algarve) ...............................................................................93 The ambiguous Olhão-Fuseta type.........................................................................................................95 The uncomfortable decoration................................................................................................................97 4 Ricardo Agarez | Contents PART II – The Region Chapter 3. Modernism and vernacular in a negotiated identity: the buildings of Olhão, 1916-1966..... 102 1. The codification of vernacular in everyday building.............................................................................................103 Pre-modernist expansion of a small town...................................................................................................103 Between vernacular and modernism............................................................................................................107 Conservative reaction.....................................................................................................................................110 2. Establishing a model for a local, vernacular-based modernism: the first low-budget housing schemes in Olhão .........................................................................................................................................................................113 Bairro Operário Lucas & Ventura, c. 1923-1925 .......................................................................................114 Bairro Municipal, the first failed public project, c. 1929-1930.................................................................115 Workers housing framework.........................................................................................................................117 DGEMN’s first Bairros Económicos, 1935-1938 / 1945-1950..............................................................119 Large-scale fishermen’s and poor classes’ housing, 1945-1950 ...............................................................122 3. The dark side of vernacular: Olhão’s 1944 master plan and its consequences.................................................126 The sphere of public buildings......................................................................................................................129 The sphere of private residential buildings .................................................................................................137 Rural modernism.............................................................................................................................................141 Chapter 4. “Miracle” in Faro: towards a modernist regionalism .......................................................... 145 1. The “Miracle in Loulé [Faro]” house (1950-1953): a symbol in the “Battle of Modern Architecture”........145 Prelude: the battlefield at national scale.......................................................................................................145 An Algarvian instrument in the “Battle”.....................................................................................................149 A “miracle” dissected .....................................................................................................................................151 South African suggestion........................................................................................................................154 A project of symbolic importance.........................................................................................................156 The battlefield in situ: Faro around 1950....................................................................................................160
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