The proto-social housing in the city of Lisbon: a holistic perspective about work force housing in the current urban context

Abstract

The relevance of work force housing in the transition of the XIX century to the XX century, namely the work force Village, thrived and assumed some diversity in its morphology-types in the city of Lisbon. Along with the historic, politic and urbanistic testimony of the evolutive process of the city development, it is possibly an example of proto-social housing. Their heritage relevance was recognized in 1990 by the Work and Study Group of ‘Patios’ and ‘Villages’ of the city of Lisbon, and in 1993 by Detail Safeguard Plan for the ‘Patios’ and ‘Villages’. The paper describes the beginning of the work force housing in the Lisbon city from a social, economic and political point of view, and emphasizes its importance in the evolution of a way of inhabiting the city. We identify the legal framework for architectonic heritage protection, to which this typology has been subjected. We analyzed 26 out of 340 work force housing study cases, based on four criteria – toponymy, period of construction, recipients and morphology type. We verified the current levels of heritage protection, using 3D digital representations and spatial analysis tools in a 3D Geographic Information Systems (3DGIS) environment.

Keywords:
Worker housing; Proto social housing; Vila Operária; SIG; Lisbon