Entre Utopia e Realidade: Casa como Organismo de habitar

Abstract

The present dissertation started from a challenge by the advisor, Professor Doctor Arquiteto Luís Viegas, of imagining what it would be like inhabiting the future. This challenge generated the decision to develop a practical project of a House of the Future. Imagining the future naturally involved trying to understand what it means to design for a reality we do not yet know, as well as, subsequently, attempting to establish the conditions that would allow for the development of such a project. Therefore, the act of inhabiting was subdivided into two intrinsically associated fields of force: a first field related to the Invariable forces, which are the human needs that remain constantly over time, and a second field consisting of the Variable forces, which are all cultural, social, and environmental transformations that occur over time. In a subsequent phase, numerous works from the past were analysed in depth, works in which the design decisions made by their authors demonstrated concerns, needs and desires inherent to the time and context in which they were situated. Through a structure subdivided into seven periods, each associated with different functional characteristics, it was possible to create a line of continuities and ruptures that allowed the elaboration of a set of ideas about what is yet to come. At the same time, these analyses also allowed for the elaboration of a statement for a House of the Future, whose project to be developed would necessarily have to comply with these requirements. Thus began the practical part of the dissertation, with the development of an experimental architectural project, conceived based on the previously defined premises, where the aim was to elaborate a solution that could be plausible, although hypothetical. As we have just mentioned and wish to emphasize, throughout this thesis, from the initial theoretical phase to the practical part, there was always a concern to ensure that the project here presented is not merely an exercise in fiction, but rather an informed and plausible response to the defined premises, albeit carried out in an experimental and innovative way.