The narrative behind the production, reception and consequences of Olhão’s first master plan, which determined the town’s buildings and urban spaces from 1945 on, provides an interesting insight into the understanding of its built identity in that period, across different levels.
Although circumstances compromised its effectiveness as a planning instrument, the history of the plan exemplifies how fragile is the dichotomy between central and local visions of regional identity, of which there was also not one metropolitan understanding but many, and how eventually such differences led to the preservation of a status quo that accounts for the city’s heritage as it stands today.
The architect João António de Aguiar (1906-1974) was officially commissioned by the municipality to prepare the Plano Geral de Urbanização (master plan) for Olhão in July 1944; he had been working on it, since December 1943, largely based on material (reports, surveys, statistic data and photographs) provided by his enthusiastic client, the mayor José Xavier.89 The development of such a study was, generally, a unique opportunity for peripheral urban centres to convey their concerns and shortcomings on to the metropolis. In October 1944 Aguiar, one of the foremost urban planners in Portugal in the last century, handed in his work, promptly and unanimously approved by the client; it then went on to public display and started a tour of official consultations (DGEMN in February 1945, DGSU in March) ending with the submission to the Conselho Superior de Obras Públicas (CSOP, the higher council for public works), on whose assessment the minister based his ruling; in July 1945 the proposal was approved, not as a definite instrument but as a mere outline of a future master plan, and with important corrections to be incorporated in the final version – which was never ultimately produced.
The plan depicted Olhão as a hard, problem-ridden town, reinforcing the case for a thorough, and in some points extreme, modernisation. Aguiar admitted that the original core kept a
“certain character,” with its buildings topped with açoteias and its narrow alleys – but stressed how these lacked basic hygiene and habitability, with no running water or sewerage, the town’s foetid environment being worsened by a guano factory just next to the centre. The dense landscape of roof terraces and towers left no room for open spaces, private or public, and it formed one massive, uninterrupted construction, deemed unsuitable for a warm climate. The pyramid-growth model of the Olhão urban house, lauded by travellers, journalists, writers, and scholars, was showed to be an imperfect form of housing, in which poor families rented out their mirantes to even poorer families; the traditional narrow backyard was explained as being the result of building more houses, in recent times, on what were originally gardens; in all of Olhão’s urban fabric, de Aguiar estimated only 200 buildings could be considered “habitable.”
Housing conditions were described in detail, and more dramatically those in illegal concentrations (slums) and legalised settlements (adapted former factories and warehouses), where
89 Cf. project statement 1944.09.07, 7 (Faro-UA/A-DUF-U-75-A).
human degradation was striking. The project statement used data from a purpose-made survey on the housing needs and illustrated it with captioned photographs: a former canning factory where 24 families (90 people) lived in walled cubicles with no roof; a backyard where five “homes” (21 people) were improvised in 80 sq m. (fig. 198); or, in the very centre, a three-compartment house shared by two families (12 people, fig. 199) where natural light came in “through one single door, in an alley already quite sombre. Nearly all the old houses in downtown Olhão are like this.”90 The document painted the town in very dark shades, and reads as an illustration of Huggett’s 1960 social-realist account of vernacular Algarve (see Chapter 1).
There were no public baths, washhouses, gardens or social assistance premises; schools, hospital, public services (court, customs, police) were poorly installed in improvised facilities;
industry was spread throughout town, mixed with housing, and fishermen – the very soul of Olhão’s workforce, nearly 7000 people – had no fishing harbour to work in.
Following a typical modernist urbanism policy, Aguiar set out to zone the town into well-defined sectors (industrial, residential, commercial and official) with specific concerns regarding new areas for “economic” housing – the schemes discussed above –, the creation of docks and related facilities, and the complete sanitation of the existing urban fabric. The incipient road network would be entirely replaced (with few exceptions) by a hierarchy of boulevards and squares structured around the new public buildings, essential nodes of the plan (fig. 200).
For the purpose of sanitation of the extant areas, de Aguiar introduced his most controversial – and, to my study, most relevant – proposal: he defined as “precarious areas” the larger part of Olhão’s centre, including not only its original core but nearly all the blocks south of the railway; isolated them from the new areas with newly-open streets; and suggested they should be gradually emptied, as new extensions grew, and have their properties devalued by forbidding the refurbishment, restoration and maintenance of the buildings; after a 20-year “complete devaluation” period, these areas could be redeveloped by the municipality.
This proposal raised serious concern in the CSOP council, whose assessment report, uncommonly rich in elaborations on architecture, was largely the work of its two architect-members: Carlos Ramos and Luís Cristino da Silva (1896-1976), a reputed supporter of traditionalist Casa Portuguesa architecture. As editor of the report, Cristino’s hand can be seen, for instance, modifying Aguiar’s description of the recent extensions in Olhão as he transcribed the original project statement onto CSOP’s document: where Aguiar merely noted that “new buildings no longer use the açoteia roofing device, which has been replaced by pitched, tiled roofs,”
Cristino’s version read that “contemporary buildings have entirely lost the regional characteristics,
90 Ibid., 25.
[replacing] interesting açoteias with vulgar and unaesthetic tiled roofs behind pretentious parapets.”91 The agenda behind CSOP’s view was clear.
Under such view, the old town was where “the Moorish influx [was] so strongly manifested”; its modest houses, chimneys and terraces crowned by “oriental” observatory towers, although parts of an insalubrious fabric were “purely regional architecture [whose] demolition would represent an irreparable loss.” They should be carefully studied in a partial plan, and sanitation measures implemented after eliminating the improvised structures that had been illegally added to them; most importantly, CSOP believed that by identifying the “fundamental characteristics of typical regional architecture,” the results of these studies would “certainly benefit”
(i.e. influence) future residential areas. Perhaps to increase the opportunities for this influence, CSOP suggested that the master plan’s regulations should require new constructions to “respect, whenever possible, the traditional elements of local architecture.”92 This, in fact, was Cristino’s personal proposal, his hand-written addition to a draft of CSOP’s assessment.93
The conditions CSOP imposed on the approval of the master plan meant that, until it was reviewed and completed by de Aguiar, it would be considered a mere outline, with little legal authority.94 The criticism it raised, and a change in the law in September 1944 (which increased the requirements to be fulfilled by master plans,95 shortly before the architect handed in his work), created a friction that partly explained why Aguiar’s final version of this document was, to the best of my knowledge, never delivered.96 Yet notwithstanding the bureaucratic conundrum, the questions raised by Olhão’s master plan illustrate the different views of the town’s future.
From Aguiar’s standpoint, the master plan was an opportunity to sanitise and profoundly modernise Olhão, and its traditional values, seen as problematic shortcomings more than as rare features, were incompatible with modern urbanism principles. Although remarkably parsimonious in written references to Olhão’s architecture, Aguiar possibly admitted its potential to inspire new realisations, but not to the extent of keeping the original. The desire to improve local living standards, at the cost of destroying the extant fabric, was fuelled by his client’s (the mayor’s) political determination, combined with his own modernist beliefs.
From the standpoint of the other central player, the CSOP board, a diverse set of principles was evident, in which notions of conservation, authenticity and uniqueness are mixed with a conventionally metropolitan, detached perspective of everyday reality. The council was more
91 “Conselho Superior de Obras Públicas. Processo N.º 1631,” assessment report, 1945.07.24, 3-4 (Olhão-CMO/SOPM).
92 Ibid., 28-29, 34.
93 Manuscript of assessment report, n.d. (Lisbon-FCG/BA-LCSM-137).
94 Although every new construction, refurbishment or maintenance works within “urbanisable” areas still had to be submitted to the ministry of public works (DGSU) by the municipality.
95 Cf. Ministério das Obras Públicas e Comunicações, "Decreto-Lei n.º 33.921," in Diário da República I Série, 197, 5 September 1944 (Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional de Lisboa, 1944).
96 In my research, I found mention only to an existing “revised” version of 1963, commissioned in 1951, the details of which I was unable to trace.
sensitive to aesthetic values of picturesque and superficial exoticism (with Oriental and North-African associations) than to its flaws. Within this composite view, the vernacular context was to be purified, cleansed of “extraneous” additions – as if vernacular was not itself essentially the result of a porous process – and preserved. The long-propagated romantic construction of Olhão as a rare remnant of times past and of foreign places was given an official seal of approval by CSOP.
Concurrently, local press conveyed concerns that Olhão would be transformed into a
“uncharacteristic agglomerate” copied from national or foreign models.97 Local elites managed to have their say in maintaining the status quo: during the months between the approval of the plan by the municipality and its assessment by CSOP, the minister of public works was sent a series of complaints by the main landowners and industrialists of Olhão. Concerned with the extent of the demolitions and expropriations foreseen, they invoked the picturesque value of their buildings: the people, they claimed, were upset and wished the plan would “not collide so violently with their interests. What has been designed is too grand (…). Olhão has her own characteristic, unique in the whole country and so admired by nationals and foreigners, which we believe should be spared.”98
Although it may seem that such claims reinforced CSOP’s critique of the plan, I find it misleading to regard either one of the two central players as being closer to a local sensibility: since the politics were not consistent in the long run, interests at play varied and evened each-other out;
moreover, this local agency was largely economy-driven, and architecture was but an excuse.
Nonetheless, there were two direct consequences of this process. Firstly, private building activity in the centre of Olhão in the 1950s and early 1960s was seriously hampered by the absence of a final version of the master plan and by its central actors’ conflicting visions. Secondly, the general guidelines and public works programme contained in Aguiar’s 1944 plan was initially followed by the municipality: the Horta da Cavalinha scheme, the industrial and harbour areas, the location of low-budget housing and some public buildings were accordant with the plan. In the design for such facilities, the Olhão and Algarve architectural features were translated by a myriad of individuals and agencies, local and national, in whose work we find a constant exchange on the subject of local built identity in public modern architecture.
The sphere of public buildings
As with most urban centres in Portugal in the early 1940s, Olhão had no purpose-built public facilities to speak of. The first four initiatives of the decade, launched in 1942 and mentioned in Aguiar’s plan proposal as being under way, set the tone for subsequent works.
From 1941, architect Rodrigues Lima developed a typology of prison buildings to be applied nationally, and in each town and village used stylised elements associated with local traditions, in a never-ending catalogue of regional variations. His tiled-roof proposal for the county
97 [Antero Nobre], "Olhão. Vila Branca," Correio do Sul, 17 May 1945.
98 “Reclamações ao Plano,” 1945.02.28 (Faro-UA/A-DUF-U-75-A).
jail in Olhão, presented in April 1942, was criticised by CSOP (again, with Cristino da Silva as counsellor) and he was asked to integrate it with “the local ambiance, to which terrace roofs would be best suited.”99 Accordingly, Lima modified the elevations to take full advantage of plain, whitewashed surfaces, while dramatizing the openings by giving them a slit-like form, and was only able to keep the tiled roofs – hidden by a generous parapet, as he had always devised them – on the grounds of economy (fig. 201). The jail was completed in 1946.
The first, October 1942 version of design for Olhão’s post office building, in turn, sported a concrete-slab rooftop as a means of giving the building a “regional character”, and it was precisely this argument that convinced the ministry of public works to accepted its extra cost compared to a more common tiled roof.100 Called to elaborate a second proposal in 1946 for the new (final) location dictated by the master plan, architect Adelino Nunes (1903-1948) issued a template-like design, similar to post offices he designed and built across the country, and with no regard for the town’s features (fig. 202). Such abstraction was refused by the municipality, whose mayor asked for the tiled roof to be replaced by an açoteia, in obedience to “Olhão people’s feeling” towards the town’s built character”101 and in line with what he did for the school buildings, soon after. The exchange did not, however, end there: from 1956 on, architect Vasco Leone designed another three versions to meet not only technical but also aesthetical requirements.102 Leone’s final design, of 1958, was a whole new approach to a modern southern architecture, where the quintessential element of Olhão vocabulary – the açoteia – was given a hybrid slant, projected horizontally over the walls as the eaves of a pitched roof would (fig. 203). This inverted parapet and its dramatic shadow line resonate with Carlos Ramos’s 1930s customs outposts, designed for the same office (DGEMN).
One of the most important trendsetters for the establishment of a custom-made official architecture for Olhão was the small building designed in 1942 for the seat of Grémio dos Industriais de Conservas de Peixe do Sotavento do Algarve (the GICPSA building), and completed in 1945. It was commissioned to architect Fernando Coruche (1911-1976) and civil engineer Costa Ritto by the canning industry association, an essential local piece of the corporative state’s structure. Departing from a previous outline deemed costly and inappropriate, the new version was a critical reading of local conditions, not merely the reiteration of a standard palette of elements (roof terrace, stair, chimney). By simplifying the layout, eliminating the porticoed galleries that lined the patio and half the openings originally devised, the designers increased internal areas and spared costs, while also producing an uncommonly tectonic play of masses (fig. 204). They aimed, in a
99 Assessment report 1942.06.01 (Lisbon-IHRU/DGEMN-DSARH-004/177-0268/02).
100 Letter from AGCTT to MOPC AG8682/8000.1.0, 1942.10.13 (Lisbon-FPC/CTT-Cx37-SGCA-Edifícios).
101 “Construção do novo edifício dos CTT,” letter from CMO to DCNECTT 479, 1947.02.10 (Olhão-CMO/SOPM).
102 Cf. minister’s assessment 1957.09.25 (Lisbon-IHRU/DGEMN-DSC-0010/01).
“Simple and rational manner, [to] preserve the region’s own character, while attending to the particular conditions of solar incidence for each different elevation (…). The main elevation, facing the sun throughout most of the day, was thus given appropriate means of defence, such as the great plain surfaces interrupted, only when necessary, by lattices cut open in the mass.”103
This was a sensitive combination of vernacular lessons (careful consideration of the sun in the limited openings) and modern rationality, and suggests how more conservative proposals such as this, symmetrical and subdued, could encompass an understanding of tradition not far removed from what post-war modernists later claimed to bring about anew. What this implies is that conservative architecture not always had a merely superficial take on vernacular, as post-war modernist reaction preferred to present it and celebratory scholarship later helped to perpetuate.
Yet the GICPSA building became a trendsetter of Olhão’s townscape owing to one of its main composition features: the pair of arched stairs, symmetrically placed in the back elevation.
This was the element favoured by Carlos Ramos in 1929 for the back elevations of his unbuilt Bairro Municipal, in its complete, elliptical arch form; in its segmental form (rampant round arch) it was simulated by Jorge Segurado in his 1940 Olhão mock-up for the exposition of the Portuguese World; used in Eugénio Correia’s housing schemes for CPCP (1935-1938) and the municipality (1945-1950), as an essential mark on an otherwise spartan architecture, it was paired again in the GICPSA building (1942-1945); once this facility was finished, and the effect of pairing was evident, the double stair was repeated by Peres Fernandes in his fishermen’s schemes for Olhão and Fuseta 1949) and by Jorge de Oliveira in his dormitory and canteen for vagrants in Olhão (1945-1949, fig. 205),104 where it was combined with the pergola-lined patio and axial chimney as the design’s main features. Oliveira was not merely inspired by Ramos’s use of the element as filtered through Correia’s, Peres Fernandes’s and Coruche’s buildings: he had Ramos’s 1929 project in his archive, which suggests he had direct access to that source of inspiration. The route followed by the paired stairways between 1929 and 1945, from an unbuilt suggestion to a widespread symbol, illustrates the importance of instantly recognisable and aesthetically appealing items in the construction of a regional identity by metropolitan agents (which all of the above were), irrespective of their more progressive or conservative stance.
The analysis of the process of building in a confined peripheral context along an extended period of time offers a number of possible readings. For instance, of how the same metropolitan actors shifted between the public and private spheres in a given moment; when commissioned by a central or local agency, they would often go on to work for private clients in the same area.
103 Project statement n.d. [1942] (Olhão-CMO/AHM-GICPSA-G/A.3). I could not find the first outline design. POiA (Citation 36).
104 “Projecto do Edifício da Associação de Assistência à Mendicidade” (Olhão-CMO/SOPM;
Lisbon-AJO).
Such was the case of Ruy Borges and António Gomez Egea, officials in the ministry of public works (DGSU) who designed a small cinema-theatre for Fuseta in July 1947 (fig. 207). At around the same time, while Egea developed his proposal for the poor classes’ scheme and built an important private residential block at the eastern entrance to Olhão (above), Borges signed the design for a new municipal market hall in November 1947 (fig. 206). This was one of the master plan’s cornerstones, together with Jorge Oliveira’s 1945 studies for a new town hall and a municipal stadium; like those, the market was generously dimensioned, disproportionate to local finances, and left unrealised. It was described using what was becoming a conventional formula: “Terraces, arches, large white smooth planes,” in accordance with Olhão, “white, Cubist, terrace land.”105 The cinema-theatre, in turn, was given a generic overall response, made specific only in the large-scale concrete lattice motif over the doors, considered the most adequate means to convey “the character of regional architecture, so prominent in this part of the country.”106
For reasons I could not determine, this proposal was abandoned and replaced, in March 1952, for one that could not be further away from it: trainee architect Francisco Modesto (b. 1923), the son of an important canning industrialist from Olhão, designed the Topázio cinema house (figs. 208-209), a compromise between a bold, almost naive experiment and the everyday building possibilities and skills in Fuseta. The abstract composition of planes and strong chiaroscuro play on the main façade – rather sophisticated and up-to-date features –, were thus realised with traditional
For reasons I could not determine, this proposal was abandoned and replaced, in March 1952, for one that could not be further away from it: trainee architect Francisco Modesto (b. 1923), the son of an important canning industrialist from Olhão, designed the Topázio cinema house (figs. 208-209), a compromise between a bold, almost naive experiment and the everyday building possibilities and skills in Fuseta. The abstract composition of planes and strong chiaroscuro play on the main façade – rather sophisticated and up-to-date features –, were thus realised with traditional