Papers by Marta Caldeira
Journal Project: Research, 2024
"Housing is a constant presence in the city and it is always social." With his 1998 critique of t... more "Housing is a constant presence in the city and it is always social." With his 1998 critique of the term "social housing," Álvaro Siza emphasised the vital role of housing in the city and the architect's social responsibility in its design. In laying out buildings and spaces, architects mediate between the individual, the group, and wider society; by intervening in existing structures they express continuities with past values and sketch new freedoms. Since housing also forms part of the framework for shared services and public life, considerations for its design extend far beyond the collective habitat, requiring what amounts to a project for the city. Yet this responsibility is exercised within a complex and contested force field, working within the constraints of land value, financing structures, and building codes, but also within broader movements in urban politics, social programmes, and economic forces competing in city-making. As Siza has often reflected, the design of housing is contingent, contested, and intensely co-produced.
For over half a century, Álvaro Siza has been active in this force field, designing housing and developing urban transformation projects. From the Vila Cova housing in Caxinas to 611 West 56th Street in New York; from housing as a social project to housing as an investment market; from the final years of the autocratic Estado Novo, through the Provisional Governments and the SAAL, to European social democracies and international practice, Siza's projects bear witness to political shifts, social reforms, and economic changes, consistently embracing the city as a "site of conflict". Contestation of the city is perhaps most explicit in the participatory processes of the 1970s in Portugal and the 1980s in Germany and the Netherlands. However, it remains present, albeit in different forms, in the face of the increasing dominance of market mechanisms and the social and economic tensions of the contemporary city.
With Alvaro Siza: Housing in the Contested City, the editors seek to explore the entangled practices and imaginaries of housing and city-making over the past five decades, and to situate Siza's work within this history. By investigating the complex force field that shapes the design of urban housing, the editors hope to reinvigorate consideration of the architect's work as socially engaged, collaborative and contested, a work on and with the collective urban imaginary. Eschewing notions of poetics, tectonics, or art that have dominated the discussion of Siza's architectural imagination, we propose to foreground approaches that cast light on the expanded web of collaborations, the disputed arena of social, material, and policy contingencies, and the politics of participation, inclusion, and citizenship: dynamics that have shaped each housing project, and in turn, have been reshaped by them.
With Alvaro Siza: Housing in the Contested City, the editors adopt a broad approach to chart Siza's trajectory in the design of housing and cities (including built and unbuilt projects), considering how this guiding thread may be used to trace broader movements in the history of progressive housing.
The New Urban Condition: Criticism and Theory from Architecture and Urbanism, 2021
As professor and founding director of the Laboratori d’Urbanisme at the ETSAB from 1969 to 2012, ... more As professor and founding director of the Laboratori d’Urbanisme at the ETSAB from 1969 to 2012, Manuel Solà-Morales oversaw the pivotal reform
of urban pedagogy in the Barcelona school. Determined to overcome the technocratic tendency that marked Spanish architecture and planning
in the final decade of Franco’s regime, Solà-Morales’ mission was to educate what he defined as the ‘architect-urbanist’ through a foundational
program that unified architecture and studies of urban form as a single discipline. Under the aegis of urban morphology, the new course of Urbanística taught by LUB’s team instituted the study of the city and its history as the primary ground for every architectural and urban project.
Book Reviews by Marta Caldeira
Conference Presentations by Marta Caldeira
Symposium, Columbia University, 2010
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Papers by Marta Caldeira
For over half a century, Álvaro Siza has been active in this force field, designing housing and developing urban transformation projects. From the Vila Cova housing in Caxinas to 611 West 56th Street in New York; from housing as a social project to housing as an investment market; from the final years of the autocratic Estado Novo, through the Provisional Governments and the SAAL, to European social democracies and international practice, Siza's projects bear witness to political shifts, social reforms, and economic changes, consistently embracing the city as a "site of conflict". Contestation of the city is perhaps most explicit in the participatory processes of the 1970s in Portugal and the 1980s in Germany and the Netherlands. However, it remains present, albeit in different forms, in the face of the increasing dominance of market mechanisms and the social and economic tensions of the contemporary city.
With Alvaro Siza: Housing in the Contested City, the editors seek to explore the entangled practices and imaginaries of housing and city-making over the past five decades, and to situate Siza's work within this history. By investigating the complex force field that shapes the design of urban housing, the editors hope to reinvigorate consideration of the architect's work as socially engaged, collaborative and contested, a work on and with the collective urban imaginary. Eschewing notions of poetics, tectonics, or art that have dominated the discussion of Siza's architectural imagination, we propose to foreground approaches that cast light on the expanded web of collaborations, the disputed arena of social, material, and policy contingencies, and the politics of participation, inclusion, and citizenship: dynamics that have shaped each housing project, and in turn, have been reshaped by them.
With Alvaro Siza: Housing in the Contested City, the editors adopt a broad approach to chart Siza's trajectory in the design of housing and cities (including built and unbuilt projects), considering how this guiding thread may be used to trace broader movements in the history of progressive housing.
of urban pedagogy in the Barcelona school. Determined to overcome the technocratic tendency that marked Spanish architecture and planning
in the final decade of Franco’s regime, Solà-Morales’ mission was to educate what he defined as the ‘architect-urbanist’ through a foundational
program that unified architecture and studies of urban form as a single discipline. Under the aegis of urban morphology, the new course of Urbanística taught by LUB’s team instituted the study of the city and its history as the primary ground for every architectural and urban project.
Book Reviews by Marta Caldeira
Conference Presentations by Marta Caldeira
For over half a century, Álvaro Siza has been active in this force field, designing housing and developing urban transformation projects. From the Vila Cova housing in Caxinas to 611 West 56th Street in New York; from housing as a social project to housing as an investment market; from the final years of the autocratic Estado Novo, through the Provisional Governments and the SAAL, to European social democracies and international practice, Siza's projects bear witness to political shifts, social reforms, and economic changes, consistently embracing the city as a "site of conflict". Contestation of the city is perhaps most explicit in the participatory processes of the 1970s in Portugal and the 1980s in Germany and the Netherlands. However, it remains present, albeit in different forms, in the face of the increasing dominance of market mechanisms and the social and economic tensions of the contemporary city.
With Alvaro Siza: Housing in the Contested City, the editors seek to explore the entangled practices and imaginaries of housing and city-making over the past five decades, and to situate Siza's work within this history. By investigating the complex force field that shapes the design of urban housing, the editors hope to reinvigorate consideration of the architect's work as socially engaged, collaborative and contested, a work on and with the collective urban imaginary. Eschewing notions of poetics, tectonics, or art that have dominated the discussion of Siza's architectural imagination, we propose to foreground approaches that cast light on the expanded web of collaborations, the disputed arena of social, material, and policy contingencies, and the politics of participation, inclusion, and citizenship: dynamics that have shaped each housing project, and in turn, have been reshaped by them.
With Alvaro Siza: Housing in the Contested City, the editors adopt a broad approach to chart Siza's trajectory in the design of housing and cities (including built and unbuilt projects), considering how this guiding thread may be used to trace broader movements in the history of progressive housing.
of urban pedagogy in the Barcelona school. Determined to overcome the technocratic tendency that marked Spanish architecture and planning
in the final decade of Franco’s regime, Solà-Morales’ mission was to educate what he defined as the ‘architect-urbanist’ through a foundational
program that unified architecture and studies of urban form as a single discipline. Under the aegis of urban morphology, the new course of Urbanística taught by LUB’s team instituted the study of the city and its history as the primary ground for every architectural and urban project.