New models for living in the city of Lisbon

Also tangible is the increased attention paid to the theme of housing in the major prizes. In the latest editions of two of the most important European architecture awards - the Mies van der Rohe and the FAD Awards - we have seen collective housing projects win. Here, we point, respectively, to the project for the La Borda Housing Cooperative by Lacol Cooperative d'arquitects and the Gavà 1737 affordable housing project by Harchitects, both in or near the city of Barcelona (Spain). 

This trend points to a focus, in the disciplinary field, on the issue of housing as a typology but also as a place for experimentation and the valorisation of a more prosaic dimension of architecture. This brings it closer to the daily needs of the population and makes it less mediatic. 

Accompanying this disciplinary trend is the attention paid by several European cities, which, by acting as commissioners, are enabling new ways of thinking about urban housing. In Portugal, in the city of Lisbon, where the housing crisis has been felt more acutely and exponentially, the City Council has acted through a series of initiatives and protocols to increase its public housing stock. 

As part of the National Affordable Rent Programme (2019), CM Lisboa sought to respond to the housing shortage in the municipality through two different actions. On the one hand through a concessions programme, which involves private capital chosen by tender on municipal land, and on the other via an exclusively public initiative. Both actions are coordinated by the SRU (Sociedade de Reabilitação Urbana), which has set up two working groups to research and propose a preferential organisation (in the first case) and a single typological model (in the second). 

As part of the second action, projects are currently being developed, particularly in the Marvila area, by ateliers previously defined as a pool of specialist architects. These include Embaixada, Inês Lobo, Oito, Miguel Judas, Paulo David and Ricardo Carvalho. 

In addition to these projects, which were also the sole initiative of the city council and included in the Entrecampos Integrated Operation, the housing estate of the same name, designed by Susana Rato and Joana Couto (SRU), has already been built. 

More recently, the Lisbon City Council, again under the direction of the SRU, launched the transfer of municipal property to housing co-operatives, a solution that makes it possible to pursue ‘the objective of broadening and accelerating the supply of affordable housing based on public property and support’. With several plots of land already mapped out, architectural projects are being developed for this purpose. These have been awarded through a public tender, such as the project for the 18-apartment housing co-operative in Lumiar, designed by Patrícia Rocha Leite. 

On this theme, the exhibition Habitar Lisboa, curated by Marta Sequeira, was on at the CCB- Garagem Sul (a museum in Lisbon) until the end of April of 2024. It reviewed the architectural policies and solutions developed over the last 50 years and also showcased ongoing solutions, which tend to be public, for the future of housing in the city. Claiming the transformative potential of architecture, the exhibition revealed a panorama that is both historical and contextual, as well as current projects under development whose realisation will be fundamental to the ‘dwellings’ it sets out to build. A series of videos/interviews with architects whose practices are intrinsically linked to the capital conjured up potential scenarios for specific areas of Lisbon.