por Joana Gonçalves *
With the awareness that nowadays architecture faces new challenges, particularly the need of integrated and integrational answers to the socio-cultural and environmental context, it is the objective of this research to develop the knowledge about undocumented examples of vernacular architecture in Portugal, significant information sources about experimental evolution of ancient wisdom. However, less usual types remained unstudied and are today menaced by oblivion: the farms in the north-eastern region of Portugal (Terra Fria do Nordeste Transmontano), characterized by dispersion in a territory commonly associated to concentrated settlements. By their isolation from network infrastructures, these examples are a challenge for contemporary solutions aimed at self-sufficiency, since they are above all dependent from the surrounding resources.
Recognizing that the architectural design interferes in the way of life and the environment, the aim is a critical reading of this heritage, stimulating alternative and innovative strategies that relate to architecture, the man and the territory, seeking greater social, environmental and economic sustainability, while respecting community identity. For this, new interventions should understand the potential of the place, the validity of the identified processes and their weaknesses, looking not only for the continuity but also complementarity, and the safeguard this knowledge, traditionally passed from generation to generation and that still have much to offer to contemporary architecture and life.
We are currently witnessing a paradigm shift in the models of architecture and construction, aware of the need for new responses to a more efficient and environmentally sustainable architecture. However, we are increasingly faced with a universal and globalizing architecture, indifferent to the particularities of the local culture. The challenge imposed to contemporary architecture, and for which this research seeks to answer is how to reconcile local identity with a more sustainable architecture.
This research develops an analysis methodology that is exemplified through its application to a case study. The developed methodology allows the identification and validation of vernacular constructive strategies from territorial scale to construction, understanding the meaning of the forms in conjunction with the means and ways of living through three sequential actions: identification, analysis and systematization.
Thus the proposed method includes both objective assessments - qualitative and quantitative - and subjective assessments, applied in the following stages: 1. Identification and mapping of case studies; 2. Spatial and constructive description through graphic and photographic survey; 3. Quantitative characterization through metric survey and constructive details; 4. Hygrothermal tests; 5. Data collection by interview the inhabitants (or previous inhabitants); 6. Processing and analysis of data collected in the previous phases; 7. Critical interpretation and systematization for later application to the project.
Thermal monitoring was conducted in 9 dwellings and only 2 of which were inhabited. The assessments were made during the two climatic seasons – cooling (summer) and heating (winter). The temperature and humidity registration was conducted with Klimalogg Pro TFA sensors at intervals of 15 minutes and periods of 15 days.
The example of the application of the methodology developed to a case study, the farms of the Portuguese northeast, showed a flexible, dynamic, participatory, socially sustainable architecture that involved the community and meet their needs. It was also rational in the management of local resources, proving itself self-sufficient not only the consumption point of view but also the actual construction and, as such, environmental and economically sustainable. In addition, the hygrothermal tests quantitatively demonstrate the validity of bioclimatic strategies found in vernacular architecture, proving the contribution of passive solutions for greater energy efficiency: good hydrothermal behaviour during the hot season and stable performance during the cold season which, although requiring complementary use of active heating systems, would deliver comfortable temperatures with reduced energy consumption. In addition, these type of buildings show the benefits from the use of some adaptation strategies to the environment, such as: earth and evaporative cooling or transition oriented spaces, offering new opportunities to contemporary architecture.
These structures are disappearing essentially because of political reasons, with the loss of competitiveness of small scale agriculture in global markets and the abandonment of the idea of community in favour of individualism. Its reactivation depends primarily on a change of mindset, which allows taking advantage from the opportunities of the place in integrated strategies, reinterpreting the system of relationships identified in this survey: the network cooperation, sharing of common inputs and the creation of new market dynamics, stimulating local lifestyles.
Above all this research reveals the importance of recognizing the context and the vernacular architecture as part of an ongoing process that provides opportunities for a more sustainable contemporary architecture that simultaneously based on the identity values recognized in existing heritages, stimulating the preservation and reinterpretation.
Although applied to a case study in a specific geographical location, this experience can be replicated in any part of the world, following the proposed methodology, since the vernacular architecture is the result of an experimental evaluation of centuries, marked by rationality in response to specific geographical and cultural context.
So, being a methodological tool of analysis of the " ecosystem " it is applicable as the basis of any plan for contemporary architecture, but is not limited to application to a single project: a sustainable architecture and identity is not a closed solution or outcome, but rather a process, a way of approaching the project, which aims to recognize the vernacular architecture weaknesses to complement and enhance the opportunities through a contemporary reinterpretation.
* Trabalho desenvolvido no âmbito da Dissertação de Mestrado Integrado em Arquitectura da Universidade do Minho, que obteve o Prémio Ibérico de Investigação em Arquitectura Tradicional, na sua 2ª edição: 2013-2014.
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