From the Late 19th Century House Question to Social Housing Programs in the 30s: the Nationalist Regulation of the Picturesque in Portugal

Abstract

In the early 20th century in Portugal, a new architecture was produced as the offspring of different references, conforming to a process of “Portugueseness” based on the picturesque. From the beginning of the dictatorship in 1926, the State took advantage of that phenomenon to sublimate nationalist values. Through the first programs of mass housing construction, the single-family house became an object of consumption and a cornerstone of national identity. The search for identity brings together different architectures across the century featuring a renewed Portuguese sentiment infused with different perspectives on the “homeland”, its history and its culture.