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The SAAL Process
Architecture and
Participation 1974–1976
Demonstration against the decree prohibiting occupations, São Pedro da Cova, 1976
Photo: courtesy Centro de Documentação 25 de Abril - Alexandre Alves Costa Collection
31 Oct 2014
1 Feb 2015
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(...) In the traditional housing system, everything
is done when the tenants arrive. With the SAAL
programme, the tenant arrives before any
decision is made (...).
Nuno Portas
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What role for architecture in a revolution?
Born out of the Portuguese revolution of 25 April 1974, SAAL — the
Serviço Ambulatório de Apoio Local [Local Ambulatory Support
Service] — was one of the most compelling processes in twentiethcentury architecture. It was a pioneering experiment in Europe, setting up technical teams (known as brigades) led by architects who,
in collaboration with the local communities, tried to address the urgent housing needs of the underprivileged communities across the
country. From surveying living conditions to supporting resident
committees, from the architectural project to monitoring cases of
land expropriation, the brigades were reinventing the practice of architecture, designing projects with the residents and not for them.
Active until October 1976, SAAL was to produce in its twenty-six
months of existence, some 170 projects that involved more than
40,000 families from North to South including districts such as Aveiro,
Castelo Branco, Coimbra, Évora, Faro, Lisbon, Santarém, Setúbal
and Porto. Forty years after the beginning of SAAL, its imprint continues to define the spatial and social fabric of cities and neighbourhoods and to prompt reflection on collective processes that can
generate social transformation.
At a time when ideas of participation are running through the worlds
of art and architecture, it may well prove worthwhile to take another
look at some aspects of Portuguese history immediately after the April
1974 Revolution. In this period, coinciding with major changes in the
power structures — both in political-formal and interpersonal terms
—, the mutual influence between vindication processes, representative structures and autonomous organisations accelerated at a staggering rate. In this giddy state, largely driven by tensions within a
society that was trying, with countless contradictions and at different rhythms, not to miss the contemporary bus, basic questions of
social organisation, such as the political and economic models, and
the emergence of the fundamental rights of the post-war European
social state were in play. However, the main issue was that of social
mobility: how is it that, in 1970, a society with an illiteracy rate of
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over 25% could create processes and mechanisms to set up the possibility of mobility? How is it that a society could collectively manage the housing shortage, estimated at around 500,000 homes in
1970, with large sectors of the (socially and culturally unclassified)
population living in degrading conditions? These central issues in
promoting development, today shelved as the legacy of the memory
of the social and economic changes in Portugal, were crucial in the
context of the ending of the authoritarian regime ousted in 1974,
which had never developed a social policy let alone a housing one.
This is the context in which SAAL would set up a significant number
of operations throughout the country. Although none of them were
finished, they were sufficiently stimulating to lead to the rethinking
of the relationship between the needy and the right to the city, stirring debates in a participatory tension that would affect the thinking
about urban planning, the architects’ understanding of their social
and political role, and demonstrate the possibility of another type of
housing policy than merely being subsumed by the market or the industrialised state policies and relocation. The radical nature of these
issues can be gauged by the fact that, in many cases, and forty years
later, the question of land ownership has still not been resolved.
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For the architects coordinating the brigades, the desire for political
participation combined with almost total commitment, both in terms
of the clear scarcity of a market in the revolutionary period, as well
as the continuity regarding some of the concerns that (especially in
Lisbon and Porto) had intensified during discussions on the practices
of architecture, disciplinary autonomy and the social responsibility
of the architect. These tangled circumstances would be the field
making SAAL a unique, complex and fruitful experience, impossible
to synthesise. There was no one SAAL, there were as many as there
were cases for each intervention, each brigade and each field experience: cases for each person. As noted in the Livro Branco do SAAL
[White Paper on SAAL] published in 1976 in response to the accounts
presented to the inspection decided by dispatch in November of the
same year, the process was played out ‘city by city, neighbourhood
by neighbourhood, “island” by “island”, house by house, room by room’.
In memories, person by person.
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PORTO
SAAL’s operations in Porto were distinguished by the fact that they
were largely located in the historic centre — the so-called ‘ilhas’
(‘islands’), long established and highly unsanitary working class
neighbourhoods. Claiming the right to the city for deprived communities, SAAL set up an intense debate over the historic city. Despite
being abruptly interrupted, SAAL’s 33 initiated operations resulted
in the building of 374 dwellings: only a small number, however, when
compared to the generous ambitions of the process.
The scale model presented clearly shows the centrality of the intervention areas and how they opened up discussion on the city’s future, giving architects the opportunity of designing the historic city
and calling the 1950s Plan of Improvements into question.
The SAAL period also saw the people intensely mobilised, motivated by the hope of getting better living conditions while maintaining their community ties. The participatory process involved a strong
connection between the brigades and resident associations. The tensions generated by the popular movement led to violent reactions,
however, even going so far as attempted bombings of SAAL/North
and its directors.
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Leal Neighbourhood
The Leal Neighbourhood pioneered community association, with the
first resident activity going back to the early 1970s. In 1974, immediately
after the revolution, the residents strongly opposed the building of a
car park that would involve their relocation and resettlement.
Sérgio Fernandez’s project, therefore, which originated in prerevolutionary resident organisation, was conceived through the dynamics of the resident process, having a project-oriented clarity that
came from an economic sense of design in adapting to the needs
and politically imperative character of the intervention.
In addition to the design drawings and the scale model built now,
another from the period is presented that allows us to understand
the synthetic character and the effectiveness of the work.
Department: SAAL/North
Project: Sérgio Fernandez
Project team: António Corte Real, Carlos Delfim,
Emídio Fonseca, José Manuel Soares, Vítor Sinde
Residents Association title: Bairro do Leal
Residents Association founding date: 30 April 1975
16 dwellings in the 1st phase and 33 dwellings in the 2nd phase
Operation date: October 1974
Construction date: April 1976
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São Victor Neighbourhood
The group of 12 houses built for the São Victor Neighbourhood is one
of SAAL’s most important operations, despite being only a small
part of the project carried out by the brigade led by Álvaro Siza Vieira.
Maintaining the urban fabric of the ‘ilhas’ and community ties, the
São Victor project combined the understanding of its participatory
nature to the precision of the project. An important case study, it led
to Siza Vieira being invited to design projects in Berlin and The Hague
in the following decade. In many aspects, São Victor represents architectural practice thought out ethically and politically, with great
stress on understanding the link between the voice of the people
being listened to and the permanence of architectural design.
Designed with a major concern for containment, the size of each
home can easily be seen from the full-scale plan, to which the staircase was added.
The photographs of São Victor as it is today, by André Cepeda,
show the architecture’s capacity for resistance, even though little of
the original project was built and part of the surroundings for which
the project was conceived has actually been destroyed.
Department: SAAL/North
Project: Álvaro Siza Vieira
Project team: Adalberto Dias, Domingos Tavares,
Eduardo Souto de Moura, Francisco Guedes, Graça Nieto,
Manuel Borges, Manuela Sambade, Paula Cabral
Residents Association title: S. Victor
Residents Association founding date: 14 April 1975
32 dwellings in the 1st phase and 20 dwellings in the 2nd phase
Operation date: November 1974
Construction date: October 1975
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Antas Neighbourhood
The project for the Antas Neighbourhood is an example of architecture
and thinking about a site within an urban area which was later distorted. The way in which the architectural design deals with the difficulties of the terrain, maintaining the characteristics of an estate and
incorporating the vernacular — which is visible in how it blended in
— contrasts with the scale of later operations, which can be clearly
seen from the scale model, as well as from the part of the project that
was actually built.
In presenting the Antas Neighbourhood as it stands today, after
40 years, the photographic work of André Cepeda demonstrates the
architecture’s resistance and highlights the type of thinking about
housing that SAAL proposed.
Department: SAAL/North
Project: Pedro Ramalho
Project team: Aires Pereira, Augusto Costa,
Francisco M. Lima, José Lencastre, Lídia Costa,
Pedro B. Araújo, Teresa Fonseca, Vítor Bastos
Residents Association title: Antas
Residents Association founding date: 1 September 1975
32 dwellings in the 1st phase and 50 dwellings in the 2nd phase
Operation date: October 1974
Construction date: October 1975
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SETÚBAL
CASAL DAS FIGUEIRAS
LISBOA
CURRALEIRA - EMBRECHADOS
BELA FLOR
BACALHAU - MONTE COXO
FONSECAS - CALÇADA
ALGARVE
MEIA PRAIA
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PORTO
S. VICTOR
MIRAGAIA
LEAL
ANTAS
PORTO
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ÂNGELA FERREIRA
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Miragaia Neighbourhood
The decision to present Fernando Távora’s Miragaia project, despite the
fact it was not built, is due to its seminal and programmatic character.
Continuing the architect’s research on the Barredo Neighbourhood
— a very poor area in the Porto’s historic centre — which he worked
on as an architect and teacher at the city’s School of Fine Arts, the
Miragaia project shows great knowledge of Porto, both territorially
and socially, as well as presenting a view of life in an urban space.
The city council’s policy on Porto’s historic centre subsequently
embarked on a path that did not include Fernando Távora’s project
for Miragaia.
The project was, in the seriousness of its design and the knowledge
that it displayed, a major attempt to recover and rationalise Miragaia’s
vacant riverside zone. It is remarkable how the highly developed proposal, its surgical nature and Fernando Távora’s notes reveal a thought
process about SAAL, its structure, and the relationship with the
residents and an intervention model in the city.
Department: SAAL/North
Project: Fernando Távora, Bernardo Ferrão, Jorge Barros
Project team: Antónia Nolo, Bernardo Ferrão, Gil Carneiro,
Joaquim Jordão, Jorge Barros, Manuel Campos, Pedro Paredes
Residents Association title: Miragaia
Residents Association founding date: 30 March 1976
900 dwellings not built
Operation date: June 1975
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LISBON
Quinta do Bacalhau — Monte-Coxo Neighbourhood
Quinta das Fonsecas — Quinta da Calçada
Neighbourhood
In Lisbon, SAAL — less tied to the procedures of an organisational
structure and more focused on individual situations (spread far and
wide across the city which had been steadily growing since the 1960s)
— banked on interventions whose urban aspect was motivated by its
scale. In most cases, the type of housing block with circulation galleries was increasingly used to control unstructured areas. The shanty
town populations demanded this type of housing, which was synonymous with social mobility and refusal of self-building, taken as a
continuation of this exploration. In the Lisbon municipality, in 1976,
the 19 interventions underway involved about 13,500 families.
This typology, used in the Quinta das Fonsecas — Quinta da
Calçada Neighbourhood (615 homes planned) by Raúl Hestnes Ferreira, as well as those in the Quinta do Bacalhau — Monte Coxo (384
homes planned) by Manuel Vicente, was linked to ambitious urban undertakings. The intention was to bring the city to the outlying shanty
town areas. None of these projects was carried out in full, and are now
fragmented and besieged by the traffic system without having produced
any of the essential community and socialising facilities.
José Pedro Cortes’ photographs present the Quinta das Fonsecas
Neighbourhood in its current condition, confined by the surrounding
road network, whilst maintaining the rationality of its design in their
incomplete courtyards.
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Quinta do Bacalhau — Monte Coxo Neighbourhood
Department: SAAL/Lisbon and Central South
Project: Manuel Vicente
Project team: Afonso José Baptista, Agostinho Xavier de Andrade,
António Albano Leitão, António Leitão, Cristina Catela Martins
Pereira, Eduardo Serrano de Sousa, Gentil Noras,
José Manuel Dinis Cabral Caldeira, Manuel Augusto Lopes
de Sousa, Nuno Matos Silva, Rita Cabral
Residents Association title: Cooperativa de Habitação
Económica Portugal Novo
Constituição da Associação de Moradores
Residents Association founding date: 6 September 1974
384 dwellings
Operation date: September 1974
Construction date: January 1977
Quinta das Fonsecas — Quinta da Calçada Neighbourhood
Department: SAAL/Lisbon and Central South
Project: Raúl Hestnes Ferreira
Project team: Adelaide Cordovil, Afonso Conde Blanco, Afonso
Pissarra, Aminadade Pio, António Assis Freitas, Aurélio Bravo,
Carlos Abreu Vasconcelos, Eugénio Castro Caldas, Fernando Silva
Pereira, Jaime Pereira, Jesus Noivo, João Luís Carrilho da Graça,
Jorge Farelo Pinto, Jorge Gouveia, José de Pina Cabral Trindade,
José Ferreira Crespo, Manuel Morim, Manuel Samora, Maria Augusta
Henriques, Maria do Rosário Leal, Maria dos Anjos Alves, Mário
Martins, Quirino Marques da Silva, Hugo Hugon, Salustiano Santos,
Sebastião Formosinho Sanches, Vicente Bravo Ferreira
Residents Association titles: Cooperativa de Habitação
Económica 25 de Abril and Cooperativa de Habitação Económica
Unidade do Povo
Residents Association founding date: 26 June 1975 and 14 July 1975
314 dwellings in the 1st phase and 301 dwellings in the 2nd phase
Operation date: October 1974
Construction date: September 1976
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Curraleira — Embrechados Neighbourhood
The Curraleira — or Horizonte Neighbourhood, as it was renamed
by its residents — would have been a major operation. José António
Paradela and Luís Gravata Filipe’s project envisaged the building
of 938 homes, resettling 864 families (Curraleira — Embrechados as
a whole) the majority of whom had lived in the intervention area for
two generations. Despite being located near busy major city axes,
it remained a secluded spot with almost no social mobility.
Although only a small part of the project was actually completed
(with many land ownership issues still unresolved, as in many such
situations), the operation was a catalyst for community involvement
that even today presents collective protests (against the installation
of a high voltage station in the vicinity, for example).
The project is presented through panels produced by the brigade
for an exhibition in 1976. A full-scale model allows us to understand
easily the developing character of single-family dwellings, materialising an important principle at the time: the reconciliation of high
density with low height of buildings.
Department: SAAL/Lisbon and Central South
Project: José António Paradela, Luís Gravata Filipe
Project team: Álvaro Eduardo Ebling de Campos Costa,
António José Tomás de Almada Guerra, Carlos Alberto Vale,
Francisco Mendonça, João Dionísio, Maria Cecília Cruz Vaz,
Maria de Deus Damião, Matilde Henriques, Paulo Menezes
Braula Reis, Vítor Correia
Residents Association titles: Cooperativa de Habitação
Económica Bairro Horizonte and Cooperativa de Habitação
Económica Lisboa Nova
Residents Association founding date: 14 November 1975
768 dwellings in the 1st phase and 170 dwellings in the 2nd phase
Operation date: November 1976
Construction date: September 1976 and December 1976
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Quinta da Bela Flor Neighbourhood
Built on a very difficult site, Artur Rosa’s project for the Quinta da
Bela Flor Neighbourhood grew out of a shanty town dating back to
the 19th century, with their being reports of families living in hillside
caves that flank the start of the A5 motorway today. A complex
process based on voluntary work, its ending was a huge blow to the
local brigade. In 1976 and 1977, Artur Rosa, who was also an artist,
produced three works that reflected on SAAL, its failure and the
subsequent sense of persecution felt by many brigade leaders.
The decision not to present the project but rather the artistic interventions SAAL I, SAAL II and SAAL III was made to reveal the performative nature of the process, its poetic intensity and the way it
kept its protagonists in mind.
Department: SAAL/Lisbon and Central South
Project: Artur Rosa
Project team: Etelvina José, Hélio Oliveira, José Luís Teles Rebolo,
José Miguel Fonseca, Luís Pereira, Manuel Coutinho Raposo,
Maria Fernanda Carvalho, Maria Isabel Rodrigues Lobo,
Nuno Blanco Bártolo, Nuno Martins
Residents Association title: Cooperativa de Habitação
Económica Bela Flor
Residents Association founding date: 13 February 1976
288 dwellings
Operation date: September 1974
Construction date: December 1976
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SETÚBAL
Casal das Figueiras Neighbourhood
Setúbal experienced the political vibrations of the revolutionary year
with great intensity. The Casal das Figueiras Neighbourhood was designed for a fishing community living in a very complicated area to
build on due to an extremely steep slope. The challenge facing architect Gonçalo Byrne was to maintain the structure of single-family
housing, according to the typologies the populations requested (such
as the ‘outhouse’ or courtyard), while making a large urban gesture.
The solution found was based on two types of housing (the square
and rectangular plans). It overcame the problem of the 36% slope in
an architecturally striking manner, but nevertheless managed to fulfil the major requirement of keeping costs down that was inherent in
any SAAL operation.
The set of slides presented were produced by Byrne and tell the
story of the project from beginning to end.
Daniel Malhão’s photographs of the neighbourhood today show
the project’s remarkable resistance to appropriations and transformations, maintaining the architectural quality of the place.
Department: SAAL/Lisbon and Central South
Project: Gonçalo de Sousa Byrne
Project team: Ana Ferreira Rebocho, Berta Sá Caetano
Residents Association title: Casal das Figueiras
Residents Association founding date: 30 October 1975
420 dwellings
Operation date: July 1975
Construction date: October 1976
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ALGARVE
Meia-Praia — Apeadeiro Neighbourhood
In the Algarve, the SAAL process was met with great enthusiasm
and involvement. The option to set up a flying squad that would supply the needs of the other teams and deal with social and political
tensions made the Algarve SAAL more fluid and organic.
It was here that the participatory process was felt more intensely,
that self-building issues found greater permeability (but also greater
discussion) and that architectural design adapted to the urgency and
dynamics of participation and politics. One of the leading figures in
the process was José Veloso, the architect responsible for a great
number of projects in Barlavento, while João Moitinho dealt with many
of the Sotavento projects and Manuel Dias with those in the Centre.
SAAL’s Meia-Praia operation became iconic due to António da
Cunha Telles’ 1976 film, Continuar a Viver ou Os Índios da Meia-Praia.
It was for this documentary that the Portuguese songwriter, José
Afonso wrote his Os Índios da Meia-Praia:
Eight thousand hours counted
Working well
And then came the first
Authenticated document
Then came a cheque in the mail
And some stonemason friends
Who came here to live
Brought neither table nor bed
With six feet of earth
Building a hut
There were women and children
Each one with his brick
‘We had an orchestra here’
Whoever says otherwise is a fool
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José Pedro Cortes’ photographs clearly show how the neighbourhood has fulfilled its purpose.
Department: SAAL/Algarve
Project: José Veloso
Project team: José Manuel Costa, José Rijo, Leonel Fadigas, Luís
Abreu, Pedro Vieira
Residents Association title: 25 de Abril
Residents Association founding date: 17 February 1975
36 dwellings
Operation date: February 1975
Construction date: January 1975
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The exhibition ‘The Saal Process: Architecture and Participation 1974–1976’ is
curated by Delfim Sardo and organized by the Serralves Museum of Contemporary
Art in collaboration with the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal, Canada.
Scientific consultant: José António Bandeirinha
Exhibition architecture: Barbas Lopes Arquitectos
Exhibition graphic design: Atelier Pedro Falcão
Design and implementation of the scale models: Department of Architecture
of the Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Coimbra
Collaboration:
Porto District Archive
FAUP / Centro de Documentação, Porto
Instituto Fundação Marques da Silva, Porto
The exhibition is accompanied by an extensive programme aimed at the general
public that includes exhibition guided tours and conversations, cinema and
performance arts cycles and Open Conversations in the SAAL/North
Neighbourhoods of Bouça, Leal, Antas and São Victor. For more information, see
the brochure available at the Museum reception desk, as well as the exhibition page
at the Serralves Museum website www.serralves.pt.