As formas sociais da Arquitectura - O uso como base de uma análise formal da evolução da habitação colectiva portuense no séc. XX

Abstract

The question of the relation between constructed form and human relations has gained significant attention over the last decades, with the development and growing studies of quantitative methods of analysis of Architecture. This thesis aims to both understand the potentialities of said formal methodologies, and the evolution of collective housing in order to adapt originally collectivist forms to the individualist tendencies of capitalist society. To do so, the dissertation will focus on the evolution of collective housing, both promoted by the public and private sectors, in the city of Porto, between 1933 and contemporaneity. Case studies are chosen for their representativeness of what was built during their given historical, social and aesthetic period, and analysed through a quantitative methodology, developed with basis on some of the most prominent theories on the subject of the last decades. The dissertation hopes to shed light on the processes through which the capitalist society adapts housing form and development to reproduce the social interactions and, therefore, class relations that it needs, while developing a formal methodology of analysis of Architecture which, based on the relations between human activities within a house-settlement, is capable of measuring values of Privacy and Segregation of the built environment.