Portuguese Moderns: the Ramalde Neighborhood by Fernando Távora 1950

Abstract

In the postwar, Portugal, entering its second decade under dictatorship and although not being directly involved in the war, witnessed the promotion of mass “social” housing. Portuguese architects were allowed a creative platform for the reinvention of housing typologies, urban forms and ideas in dialogue with central Europe. Fernando Távora was one of the architects engaged in this process  early in his career as council architect at Porto, and designing one of very few examples of modernist housing in Ramalde. This article examines this early work by Távora as a grounding moment in Portuguese modern architecture after the war, situating Ramalde in the geography of Porto’s postwar urban changes. Using the method of derive as a form of critical geographical analysis, the article combines archival research with formal and environmental analysis of the built environment of Ramalde. Although Távora’s eminent career is more commonly referred to later works, this article argues that Ramalde’s housing plan, entangled in the dictatorship’s working of welfare with control, opens the discussion to alternative readings of postwar modern architecture in Portugal, while contributing to debates about the parallel development of modernism and European political identity in the postwar.