This text derives from A British Design: the Influence of Anglo-Saxon Architecture on the Alfragide Towers, which was a project carried out as part of the theoretical part of the final year design course for the architecture degree course at ISCTE in the 2010-2011 academic year. We conducted research on the theme of the city and its integration in the territory under the title Optimist Suburbia, a term, which, as I understand it, sums up all the work carried out during the year, we were given the proposal of analysing Portuguese design projects that attempted “city building” in the context of suburban Lisbon in the 1950s to 1970s: the Nova Oeiras development by Luís Cristino da Silva (1953-71); the Alfragide Towers by the Conceição Silva firm (1968-74); and the Portela de Sacavém development by Fernando Silva (1959-79).
     Following this research phase, in which we studied, in particularly, the work at Conceição Silva firm, as a whole, I developed an interest in the possible influences of British architecture on the Alfragide Towers while researching the diverse works produced by Conceição Silva’s firm and studying an interview with the architect Tomás Taveira, who worked for the firm from 1965 to 1972.
     Analysing diverse British design projects, I searched for direct or indirect influences of these works and British architectural culture in general on the Alfragide Towers. To this end, I also undertook study visit to the United Kingdom, a travel route that could have been followed by Portuguese architects visiting the country during the above-mentioned period.
     What I learnt was that in Portugal in the 1960s, it was only through articles published in foreign magazines or, ideally, through study visits, that one could really become acquainted with British post-war architecture.  I also learnt that superficial contact with Brutalist architecture, when it became more internationally known, meant that it was disseminated essentially for its aesthetic element, given that, as we know, images spread much more quickly than theory. This had much to do with the influence of Le Corbusier on this British movement, as he became the most comprehensive source of inspiration for Brutalist aesthetics the world over.
     I also learnt that the atmosphere within the Conceição Silva firm was very propitious to formal and spatial research and his collaborators were given considerable freedom of conception.
     With access to foreign magazines and books, paying above-average salaries and maintaining a comfortable and constant number of projects in its portfolio, the Conceição Silva firm was, indeed, a privileged place for the development of architecture without restrictions other than those imposed by architectural design itself; it allowed for detailing down to the smallest design detail. 
     At the time in which the Alfragide Towers were built, living in the Lisbon suburbs was seen by the middle classes as an alternative to the more hectic life of the centre of the capital. Lisbon could be reached quickly, thanks to the new Lisbon-Cascais motorway made possible by the opening of the Duarte Pacheco viaduct.
     Assuming a true change of habits – living in the suburbs and working in the city – the wealthier classes sought housing options that were close to the capital but relatively independent and offered better quality of life. The plan for the Alfragide Towers sought to respond to those needs, filling a gap that existed in terms of planning projects that could in effect create satellite cities around Lisbon – contrary to what had happened thus far.
     In Alfragide, the Conceição Silva firm endeavoured to “build city”, and the tower complex, with its civic and shopping centre, was to serve as one of the two new nuclei in the coherent development of a suburb.
     As the firm controlled the whole process, from taking over the land to the construction and sale of the dwellings, a scenario was given that made it possible to have a total concentration of all architectural questions relating to the housing.
     In terms of interior organisation, the apartments were treated as if they were single-family houses, returning to and developing on Mediterranean housing themes that had already been explored, for example in the Moradias da Balaia project (1966).
     It is in the public zones in the Alfragide Towers project where one can sense the British influence more.
     The sources for this work are not, however, completely obvious, given that the design of the towers is, on the whole, quite rich – perhaps precisely because it crosses the Mediterranean experiences with the new British ideas. It is also definitely not inferior in qualitative terms, when compared to the housing projects of the Smithsons, Stirling and Gowan, or even the mature modernism of Lasdun.
     Despite the British influence, certain features of the Alfragide Towers are removed from the principles of New Brutalism as referenced by Reyner Banham. According to this British critic, for a design to be considered Brutalist, it must fulfil three principles: be memorable as an image; have a structure clearly apprehensible (not just the physical but also the functional structure); and it must use materials in their natural state.
     The Alfragide Towers are not a project that is as clearly apprehensible as, for example, the Smithsons’ Hunstanton Secondary School (1949-54). Nor do they use the materials in such a “raw” way as, for example, the Ham Common apartments by Stirling and Gowan (1955-58).
     But they are, undeniably, “memorable as an image”,as a point of reference in a landscape without buildings of relevance, which is one of the points it has in common with the Barbican Housing Estate (Chamberlin, Powell and Bon, 1956-83).
     Despite the fact that its structure is not always visible and it is not a building with a simple organisation, the independent distribution of the Alfragide Towers apartments around an access nucleus, as if it were a cluster, reminds one of the “clear relationship between the parts” Banham spoke of, which is a characteristic the project shares with Denys Lasdun’s Keeling House (London, 1955-59).
     Furthermore, in some Brutalist designs, the functional elements take on protagonist roles. In the Alfragide Towers we can witness a type of homage to the staircase shaft of the University of Leicester Engineering Building (Stirling and Gowan, 1959-63), which is reinterpreted in the stairway in Alfragide.
     Finally, although plastered surfaces dominate in the towers, their application and conjugation with the exposed concrete, glass and wood in their natural state comes close to the “treatment of materials” in Brutalist projects.
     However, the criteria defined by Banham are open to re-examination, especially now that 56 years have passed since the appearance of his first article on New Brutalism1 and 45 years since the publication of his book, The New Brutalism: Ethic or Aestethic, in which he announces the dissolution of the movement and reveals a certain disenchantment with the failed ideas and the evolution of the architecture of his protégés. 
     Banham himself entered the realms of self-contradiction when, in 1964, he praised the University of Leicester Engineering Building for its iconic character, organisational clarity and the “as found” use of cheap industrial materials, before going on to declare it as non-Brutalist two years later for not referencing in any (at least evident) way the work of Le Corbusier.
     What Banham saw as the end of the New Brutalist movement was perhaps, in reality, simply its integration into everyday architectural output, as opposed to the unrealisable idealism proposed by a totally “other” architecture.
     Stirling and Gowan’s building in Leicester and the Economist cluster by the Smithsons (London, 1959-64) were, perhaps, not a withdrawal on the part of the movement, but its apogee, its transformation into “world class [architecture]”2, as Banham himself had described the Engineering building.
     Was creating marginal architecture an essential characteristic of New Brutalism?
     The enthusiasm these two buildings met with gives us grounds to reflect on whether the New Brutalist movement did not, indeed, open many new paths for the architecture of the latter half of the 20th century, without having totally forfeited its fundamental principles.
     Both buildings are iconic, structurally clear and stimulating, and the materials are treated, albeit with a certain degree of refinement, without them losing their objectivity and “raw”, non-treated character.
     The Alfragide Towers have inherited that new form of seeing the world, accepting it as it is and seeking successful and interesting integration. However, they were built in a period of transition, and the lack of urban planning of the following decades meant that developments of the same type and same quality did not emerge. The civic and shopping centre did not survive the wave of industrial development in the area and the emergence of large-scale shopping centres. Perhaps it was the wish of the Conceição Silva firm to create a city on the margin of administrative decisions.
     But it is a fact that, in urban planning terms, the Alfragide Towers failed as a driving force of urban development, as many other Brutalist projects did.
     Nevertheless, considering the urgent need for intervention on the periphery today, one arrives at the conclusion that most, if not all, of suburban development achieved very weak results in terms of promoting a sense of the desirable city.  It is, therefore, totally justified to look at the Alfragide Towers, as Londoners look today at the Barbican, as an “imperfect masterpiece”, as a daring gesture of urban intervention that could be of great use in rethinking the periphery. A cosmopolitan way of life, more than an aesthetic, will perhaps be the main British legacy of the Alfragide Towers. |