Understanding Bunker Architecture Heritage as a Climate Action Tool: <i>Plan</i> <i>Barron</i> in Lisbon as a “<i>Milieu</i>” and as “<i>Common</i> <i>Good</i>” When Dealing with the Rise of the Water Levels

Abstract

Abandoned on the coast as skeletons, bunkers are the last theatrical gesture in the history of Western military architecture (Virilio, 1975). Technically obsolete, this military territory has fallen into extinction and is now generally forgotten. We present the Plan Barron of Defense of Lisbon and Setubal case study, a mid-twentieth-century set of bunkers, recently declassified, as a case study to discuss the future of this heritage facing the climate crisis. Can oblivious historical war heritage be an opportunity to fight climate emergencies? We present four theoretical concepts to fundament this environmental positioning: (i) Heritage Management and Climate Governance, (ii) Techno-aesthetic (Simondon, 1992): panopticon territorial cluster; (iii) Military: camouflage as design, and (iv) Civil: inheritance as future potential. The results allow us to look at military architecture in the form of a bunker, as a set of territorial, architectonic, cultural, and social interests. We demonstrate that the counterpoint of its invisibility is a singular naturalized “milieu”, a place where the memory of war can be transformed as a buffer zone that combines characteristics of climate and coastal resilience with cultural and social interest as a “common good”.

Keywords

• bunkerology
• climate action
• military architecture
• climate resilience
• Second World War
• Portuguese military architecture