Happy were the days when architects and students of architecture in Portugal could expect to be discussing “O Problema da casa portuguesa” [“The Problem of the Portuguese House”] or “Para uma arquitectura portuguesa de hoje” [“Towards a Portuguese Architecture for Today”]2. Today we unfortunates are violently and unavoidably forced to incorporate into our debates questions such as employability, the financial crisis, the markets, public investment, private investment, public-private investments, public-private participations and all the other terminology, which, I humbly admit, I still haven’t got the hang of. Thus, and subscribing to Saramago’s appraisal of Apelles’s error3, I am the shoemaker and my knees are hurting.
The right to the disciplinary practice of architecture has for a long time been challenged due to ideological schizophrenia on the part of the higher education course accreditation authority in Portugal and is increasingly negated by a state of siege.
Because it would be a waste of effort, in this discourse I will not remind the reader that the discipline of architecture is, of all courses one of those that is offered by the most schools in Portugal (from public and private schools to cooperatives) and produces, visibly and without the need for statistics, an exaggeratedly high number of young graduates each year. Nor would it be coherent to insist in criticising the Higher Education Assessment and Accreditation Agency (A3ES), which allows for the training of more than one thousand architects each year when the country – this country – has no need for them and most likely will not be needing them so soon.
With apparent justification, those who advocate the liberalisation of access to the profession argue that there is no reason to restrict the freedom of young people in choosing their higher education course. The others – with whom, I admit, I am more aligned – reject this wild and anarchic state, ignoring concerns of compliance with social and civilisational programmes. The excessive offer of socially unnecessary training places is a public attack on the expectations of young people and this is what Portuguese system does.
A system that is organised on the assumption of non-compliance with a right that the system itself creates is brainless. The Portuguese higher education system is brainless and is responsible for the disastrous, miserable condition of the architect in Portugal – which the youngest architects are experiencing now and the older will experience later. Over the last two decades more places and new courses have been offered (some with a scientific autonomy that is as much debatable as it is debated) without a moment of reflection and national integration as to the dramatic consequences that this approach – in the face of criticism, good judgement and responsibility – could have in terms of the social performance of a profession.
The discourse about the opportunities that open up in times of crisis, in addition to emerging only in times of crisis, also emerges as the consequence of collective despondency and, of course, the universal ascertainment of the scarcity of opportunities – which is, in itself, a terrible pronouncement with regard to its viability. In truth, it is easy to establish that those who sell opportunities in times of crisis are selling a fallacy. Crisis – at least crisis of the sort we are witnessing here – is not synonymous with opportunity, but with a disastrous and atrocious recession, the consequence of successive errors we have been making and seem to insist on making.
The repeated and constant award of international accolades to Portuguese architects underlines the universal recognition of the identities of Portuguese architecture, from the Survey [Inquérito à Arquitectura Regional Portuguesa, 1955-60] and about what happened before the Survey, and it is nourishment for our collective pride. It is not, however, a relief to know that the present dramatic problem extends, for example, to the discourse of Eduardo Souto de Moura, who, with his usual frankness and honesty, reminds us of the alarming situation that is the lack of work.
If we were as Apelles would have us, we would be humble shoemakers who, because we do not have the necessary studies to speak on the matter, would have pain in our knees and would still be talking just about shoes. But architects (first the younger ones and later the older ones) have unbearable pains in their knees and think they are competent enough to speak of it. In the search for solutions the most immediate response is the least courageous one. Emigration, be it the free labour market and worker mobility, or not, be it temporary or for a long time, is – in all its aspects – the denial of a problem that is ours; it is running away from something for which we are all collectively responsible.
Alexandre Alves Costa4, freely quoting José Gil, has said that the “problem of identity is, first and foremost, our making identity a problem”. I have resigned to the idea that the discussion on the discipline of architecture is, in part, thus: it is part of its own condition. But, nevertheless, I am convinced that, for students of architecture and architects it is urgent that there be a huge collective coming together – in presence, in thought or through some other kind of support.
May the most inclusive and complete training known to us from the point of view of knowledge and construction of the critical discourse – that of the architect – serve to provide a vigorous debate on the practice of the discipline, from which the solutions can go in one direction only: liberating the hostile environment of discussion for the architect and bringing back the opportunity to discuss “The Problem of the Portuguese House” or “Towards a Portuguese Architecture for Today”. |
1 Title of a track by the Iranian rock band Take it Easy Hospital living in exile in London.
2 Fernando Távora. O problema da casa portuguesa. Lisboa: Manuel João Leal, 1947.
Reedition and amplied version of the previous article O problema da casa portuguesa. Aléo. (10 Nov. 1945).
3 “Apelles would allow a cobbler to point out a mistake in the shoes of a figure he had painted, because shoes are the cobbler’s business, but the same cobbler ought never dare to give an opinion on, for example, the anatomy of the knee. In short, a place for everyone and everyone in his place. At first glace, Apelles was right: he was the master, he was the painter, he was the authority, and as for the cobbler, he would be called for at the appropriate time when it was a matter for putting half-soles on a pair of boots. And really, where would be be if any person, including the most universally ignorant, could allow himself to offer an opinion on things he didn’t know? If someone hasn’t completed the necessary studies, he should keep silent and leave the responsibility of making the most suitable decisions (suitable for whom?) to those who know.
Yes, at first glance Apelles was right, but only at first glance. The painter of Philip and Alexander of Macedon, considered a genius in his day, forgot one important aspect of the matter: the cobbler has knees, so by definition he is competent in these joints, even if it is only to complain about the pains he feels in them (if he does).’’ – José Saramago. ‘Crime Against Humanity?’’ Expresso. Lisboa : Impresa. Caderno de Economia (18 Out. 2008). Published in English in José Saramago. The Notebook, London: Verso, 2010.
4 Alexandre Alves Costa. Nós somos da Póvoa do Varzim. JA: ser português. Nº 237 (Out./Nov./Dez. 2009), p. 81-92; Last class, FA/UP, 2010.