A Arquitectura Rural do Baixo Lima. O Abandono da Casa Agrícola e a sua Transformação ao longo da EN204

Abstract

This Master's Thesis main theme is the study of the impact of the agricultural abandonment in the Farm Houses located on Vila Franca and Subportela, villages located in Viana do Castelo's county. Those houses belonged to a rural bourgeoisie and whose dates of construction are comprised between the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 20th century. These are established in a territory where small landholding agriculture is very characteristic, due to the division of property present in Minho's region, resulting in intensive but unscientific farming. In the first half of the 20th century, the agricultural sector employed a large number of active population, corresponding to about 50% of it, in 1950. However, this number suffered a significant decline during the second half on the 20th century, being only 4% at the beginning of the 21st century. Besides agriculture being seen as unattractive, requiring a lot of work and resulting in low income, the aging of the population devoted to that sector of activity contributed to the large-scale abandonment of that sector. Also the development of technological processes of mechanization as well as the emigration phenomenon and the substantial industrialization occurred in the second half of the 20th century were determinative to that fact. Popular Architecture is one of the most important factors in the landscaping humanization, in which the rural house, according to Veiga de Oliveira and Galhano, relates to a true agricultural instrument. It rises in response to several constrains, such as geographical, economic, social, historical or cultural. It also reveals proper adaptation of the dimensions and hierarchization of the spaces in response to accommodating people as well as animals, agricultural products and tools. Those houses underwent structural transformations related to the changes of the agrarian needs. Thus, the case studies allowed to develop an analysis of the architectonic transformations occurred in those agricultural houses as spaces linked to the agricultural production, either in sense of embracing the modernization of agriculture, to incorporate different uses or the total neglection of the properties by the new generations.