Clarify, rehabilitate, dignify

The project focuses on century-old 'ilhas', substandard houses located inside Porto’s city blocks, while exploring the idea of urban rehabilitation on par with typology development. It also reflects on the necessity for social projects to reach the conditions set for the rest of the city, enabling social housing and true equity to sit on city centres.

CLARIFY. Despite some specific past attempts, whether through rehabilitation or eradication, the last decades have seen little effort to solve the problem surrounding these typologies. However, the demographic changes observed since, the refinement of the legal framework – at both state and municipal level – and the augmented support from several institutions enable intervention strategies at three scales (city, ‘ilha’, house) which, in turn, create appropriate housing conditions while putting the architect as the mediator between all the participants.\r\nREHABILITATE. Therefore, the project explores these tools in the neighbourhood of Antas, Porto, which presents century-old ‘ilhas’ that, despite some occasional interventions, still sustain substandard housing conditions. The project begins through the recognition of intervention principles in different scales that allow these ‘ilhas’ to be integrated in the city, adapts to the demographic needs at the urban scale and develops housing with similar conditions to the legal framework in search of the strength of the architect’s social and interventive part in the urban development processes.\r\nConsidering the systematic creation of the ‘ilhas’, including on uneven plots, it is beneficial to propose an intervention strategy that doesn’t focus on a case-to-case basis, keeping the houses landlocked inside the block, but one that rather integrates the houses in the city. This allows for the architect to address the urban scale while simultaneously developing typologies that apply to the demographic needs.\r\nDIGNIFY. Consequently, for the typology design, the legal framework should not be overlooked, but rather included so it can be a defence mechanism and not a condition. To bypass the rules serves only to perpetuate the legal void practiced until today, which in turn leaves certain houses inadequate and without hopes of urban transformations, also resulting in a departure from the conditions used for the rest of the housing. Equitable conditions for social housing will only be achieved using the standards applied for every house.