Aldo Rossi and the Portuguese experience. Bairro Bela Vista, Casal das Figueiras: projects for the city

In 1976 José Charters Monteiro involved Rossi in the design of a building included in the Plan for Bairro Bela Vista in Setúbal. The intervention promoted by the Fundo de Fomento da Habitação (FFH) is part of a process that in Portugal has been crucial in the definition of a new approach to the solution of the housing problem. This approach inserts the topic of popular dwellings in the wider issue of city construction. In the same years Gonçalo Byrne realizes the housing project in Casal das Figueiras (1975). Conceived within the social development programs of the Serviço de Apoio Ambulatorio Local (SAAL), this intervention is paradigmatic of the search, carried out by the Portuguese architect, for the expression of an idea strongly related to the territory. In the introduction to the portuguese edition of L’Architettura della città (1977) José Charters Monteiro states that the real consequences of Rossi’s considerations were not stylistic but conceptual, introducing a global vision of the city and architecture, as profound manifestations of human life. In this context is placed the attention that Rossi reserves to disciplinary fields external to architecture and which the author himself put in evidence in his introductory paper. The theories coming from the fields of geography and history contribute, in fact, to defining the character of design and the study of form, typical of architecture. This research proposes a comparison in the light of the themes set out focusing on the relationship that, through the project, Rossi establishes with the territory and in particular with the city, identifying points in common and the divergencies with the geographical attitude that characterizes Portuguese architectural culture of the second half of the Twentieth Century. In Setúbal Rossi designs a large residential building as part of the city and, more specifically, as an integral part of the district, confirming an architectural type linked to the evolving form and to the society to which it belongs. The design solution, deriving from a very precise model that Rossi previously had the opportunity to experiment in the project for the Gallaratese district, becomes a tool for the spatial-temporal investigation of the phenomena that generated it. Despite never actually being realised, Rossi’s project offers itself as an element of confirmation of the theories on the reading of the place fielded by the architect and as an element of comparison with the contemporary Portuguese experiences. The investigation on the project for Setúbal takes place through the analysis of the documents kept in the archive of the Center Canadien d’Architecture and through the interviews taken with José Charters Monteiro and Gonçalo Byrne, aimed at shedding light on the development of Rossi’s proposal and on the relationship between architecture and geography as an important part of his theories and his works.