Cathy Hawley and Hugh Strange
Malagueira, a public housing development designed by Alvaro Siza from 1976 onwards, sits on the periphery of the ancient Roman, medieval and baroque city of Evora in Portugal. It has long been regarded internationally as a seminal work of critical regionalism and Siza's most important statement on the typologies of social housing. Conceived of as an extension of the old city, it specifically rejects the model of six storey low-cost housing blocks, responding instead, and at equivalent density, to the local landscape and vernacular building form.
Shortage of public funds, and the advent of a socialist government in the 1990's, meant that none of the civic buildings designed by Siza were completed. There is a will on the part of the newly elected communist Mayor of the city to revive these projects by looking again at the urban ensemble. Our unit is situated in this contemporaneous situation and speculates on ideas of collective living: the individual and the city. Projects include forms of collective housing: co-housing, housing for old people; buildings for the public and the community; and urban proposals that reinforce the idea of the collective life in and around Malagueira.
Student work: Nana Biamah-Ofosu, Aline Knowles, Catherine Shiner, Bushra Mohamed, Hristina Kehayova, Victoria Sehlstedt, Ben Shaw
