Rural housing as field of modernist experiences

Abstract

The Portuguese proposal to CIAM X (Dubrovnik 1956) wasfocused on the issue of rural planning. A new village was established among a set of existing ones, working as a structural core. The vernacular influence was clearly present through the images of Trás-os-Montes (Survey on Portuguese Regional Architecture) used as a reference source for the new house typology. In addition to the vernacular, one can also identify modern references, in both Portugaland Spain, within the scope of internal colonization in the 20th century,regarding the settlement of the Portuguese agricultural colonies (1920smid1950s) and the pueblos in Spain (1940s-1971), which had significance for the contemporary countryside image. Considering “theevolutive house” of the Portuguese proposal in CIAM X, or the modularsolutions of the colonization settlements, one can find examples lyingbetween the trendy and those in rooted architectural culture. In this paper, we analysed the rural 20th century housing idea present in theinternal Iberian colonization settlements and in the ideological and political context under the dictatorial regimes. Using a comparative method, two case studies were examined in order to identify andabstract through cross-referencing main rural directions in the differentIberian contexts, and to frame common factors or different experiences,in the application of the planning schemes in both settlement and housing attributes.

Keywords

• Rural house
• Iberian internal colonization
• Modernist landscape