Portugal's Communist Housing Estate by Álvaro Siza

The Portuguese architect Alvaro César once famously claimed, architects don't invent anything, they transform reality. And I don't think any of his projects exemplifies that position more richly than the Quinta de Malagueira housing estate, which he began building outside the city of Évora in 1977. Accommodating more than 1,200 social housing units, this is effectively a whole new neighborhood, but it's one that remains remarkably respectful of the pre-existing conditions of its site. Évora is a Roman city, separated from the surrounding landscape by an encompassing wall. At Malagueira, César establishes a very different relationship between architecture and landscape, deploying great fields of two-story housing, interspersed with areas of open ground of an equivalent scale. These tight cobbled streets have an almost rural atmosphere and are always configured so that they run downslope, with the effect that you get this very pronounced stepping profile. César employs a number of different house plans, but they're all a variety of back-to-back terraced courtyard house. There are no front gardens here, so there's a very marked contrast between the atmosphere of the street and the open ground. This house is one that Alvaro César maintained for his own use over the many years in which he was involved in the construction of Malagueira. The house feels unusual for being wider than it is deep, with every room addressing the courtyard. One of the principal motivations behind the use of the courtyard type was that it allowed residents to extend their properties without detriment to the reading of the street. Here, for example, one could readily imagine knocking through and adding an extra ground-floor room with a terrace above. This is a space that invites a whole range of associations. White-rendered courtyards are certainly a feature of Portuguese vernacular architecture, but César also has in mind early modernist sources, such as the work of Adolf Loos. And as the marble fountain that he's installed in his own courtyard perhaps reminds us, the courtyard house is at root a Roman type. César has cited Pompeii as a central inspiration for the design of Malagueira, and that's a reference with real relevance to this location, given Évora's Roman origins. César also makes explicit reference to a later project of Évora's development, a monumental 16th-century aqueduct that cuts through the surrounding landscape, enters the city, and is colonised by shops and houses. At Malagueira, César employs a network of elevated concrete block conduits that supplies not only water but also electricity to the fields of houses. The estate was built within a punishingly limited budget, so it was significant that this means of distributing the services proved cheaper than burying them. However, César's aqueducts are more than just an infrastructural device, providing the housing fields with a threshold to the landscape. In places, they're developed into arcades, lined with shops and cafes, and offering a way of crossing the site under cover from the often very fierce sun. Work on Malagueira was initiated shortly after the 1974 Revolution of the Carnations, which brought a communist administration to power in Portugal after many decades of Salazar's rule. The estate was built on expropriated land, with the majority of houses being occupied by the members of a housing cooperative. It's matured remarkably well. Homes are well-maintained and have accommodated the additions of residents comfortably. If there's a frustration, it's that César's plans for a number of public buildings on the site, including most prominently an extraordinary half-domed external auditorium, which would have occupied the square immediately beside me, were shelved in the 1990s after the local communist administration was voted out of office. But recently, Évora has regained a communist mayor, who has expressed his determination to see some of these unrealised projects built at last. César never conceived his work at Malagueira as an architectural monument, but rather as an episode in the site's ongoing history of transformation. Today, the residents are as much the authors of this place as he is. But nearly 40 years on from his first involvement with the site, it's heartening to think that he's set to have a role in its future.