The exhibition 'If this were a paradise made of nothing', organized by FAUP researchers Ana Catarina Costa and João Paupério and by former students Francisco Ascensão and Maria Rebelo, synthesizes the work being developed in the scope of the project "An Archaeology of Utopia", which intends to revisit the 75 SAAL neighborhoods built throughout the country. Free admission.

The exhibition takes place within the scope of a project being developed by researchers from FAUP's Center for the Study of Architecture and Urbanism within the context of the research groups 'Architecture: Theory, Project, History' and 'Morphologies and Dynamics of the Territory'.

As part of the revolutionary process initiated in 1974, the Local Ambulatory Support Service (SAAL) promoted an alternative way to solve the housing needs of the popular classes, through the transformation and improvement of their slums. From North to South, residents, technical staff and local and state entities sought, in an intensive and collective effort, to give a voice, a home and a city to the most marginalized sectors of the population.Almost five decades later, what was the fate of the 75 operations built under this program? According to a perspective anchored in the residents of the neighborhoods, we intend to recognize the stratigraphic layers that make up the forms of community life and, from these, show a multiplicity of conflicts, affinities, contradictions and solidarities. This work in progress is composed of a set of photographs of the neighborhoods and excerpts from interviews with current residents, as well as part of an archive on the process developed in one of the first SAAL operations to take the lead after the 25th of April, the Maceda operation in Porto.

- Ana Catarina Costa, Francisco Ascensão, João Paupério, Maria Rebelo | Uma Arqueologia da Utopia

Conference | 'A cidade em disputa: uma genealogia da habitação social a partir do sul da Europa' by María García Ruiz

10th February, Friday, 19h00, Casa das Artes, Porto

The conference will be given in Spanish

Architecture is always, or at least cyclically, based on a tremor: that of the agitation of bodies in search of a place, of forms to come. This is the working hypothesis of the curatorial research "The city in dispute "*, which proposes a re-reading of the history of social housing in southern Europe through three unique experiences: neo-realism in Rome, the poblados dirigidos of Madrid and the SAAL in Porto. In these three experiences, the conflict takes different shapes, but they all articulate the poetic rigor of design, the consideration of urgent issues about minimal housing, and the embodied desire of communities that until then had been on the margins of history.

* "La ciudad en disputa. Experimentos colectivos en torno a la vivienda social en el sur de Europa (1949-1976)" is an exhibition that will be on view at La Virreina Centre de la Imatge de Barcelona between 04.03.2023 and 18.06.2023, organized together with Moisés Puente.+ info: ajuntament.barcelona.cat

Project 'Uma Arqueologia da Utopia'

Ana Catarina Costa

Francisco Ascensão

João Paupério

Maria Rebelo

Photographs

Francisco Ascensão

Design

Irina Pereira

Miguel Almeida

Support

Centro de Estudos de Arquitectura e Urbanismo, Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto

Câmara Municipal do Porto (Projeto Pláka, Ágora – Cultura e Desporto, E.M)

Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia

República portuguesa

Direção Regional de Cultura do Norte

Casa das Artes.