As casas de lavoura do Vale do Leça Tirsense - contributo para a definição de uma tipologia e a reabilitação da Quinta de Merouços

Abstract

In a close relationship between the human being and the environment within, Vernacular Architecture emerges from one of the most basic human needs: the need for shelter, protection. Thus, the "Casas de Lavoura do Vale do Leça Tirsense" (Farmhouses of the Valley of the Tirsense's Leça) configure a Tirsense's people adaptation to the characteristics of the territory, in line with the housing character and with the desired functionality, in connection with the rural world and with the farming labor. So, the importance given to supporting facilities for agricultural activities, such as courts, sheds, cellars, threshing-floor, threshing-floor's houses and others, as shelter and storage of agricultural products and machinery, overlaps the house's comfort and habitability. Profound social changes, related to rural areas devaluation, opposed to the recognition of the urban life's advantages, and new family and housing paradigms, coupled with changing needs of comfort and security, has been taking rural constructions to a high state of deterioration or even abandon. Recent decades have seen developments in the efforts to gradually counteract that tendency. The study of these rural vernacular architecture examples is fundamental to make that attempt to counteract go further than a simple attempt and materialize itself in an informed and consistent way, whether by the client or by professionals in the subject. The road ahead is long and sinuous, with many obstacles, but it should be noted that, in recent years, many were those who contributed with small but important steps. Heritage safeguarding and protection seems to see in architectural rehabilitation the light at the end of the tunnel. Many are the variables and issues that this type of intervention poses and that architects should take seriously, yet, they should not forget that Architecture must be its fruit in its season, and the bottom line is precisely here: to rehabilitate the vernacular architecture adapting it to new standards of comfort, giving it contemporaneity, signs of our times.