Hidden in plain sight: politics and design in state-subsidized residential architecture

Abstract

Social housing has a long tradition in Europe. Since the early 20th century, these often anonymous and sometimes unappreciated buildings have formed the suburbs of large European cities. With the multidisciplinary international research project "Mapping Public Housing," the Center for Studies in Architecture and Urbanism at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto traces this architectural heritage and shows that often lively settlements and entire city districts have emerged from subsidized housing. There we find today a qualified urban fabric, somewhat under risk of deprivation, yearning for strategies that focus on sustainability and refurbishment of housing and housing estates. This book takes a closer look at notable cases from Portugal, Great Britain, Germany, Switzerland, and Spain, among others, with a spectrum that ranges from the beginnings of social housing in Portugal, after World War I, to the fall of the dictatorial regime in 1974. Gathering only apparently scattered interests and researches, it establishes a heterogeneous reading of its subject and suggests sustainable conceptual approaches to housing for the future. The result is a broad panorama that understands the development of subsidized construction as part of Europe's cultural history and traces the fundamental role that state-subsidized housing played in the emergence of the European welfare state.