Housing of 'Ancién Regime' in Santana's Hill: Types and ways of living

HOUSING OF ‘ANCIEN RÉGIME’ IN SANTANA’S HILL: TYPES AND WAYS OF LIVING

Abstract

This paper seeks the understanding of Lisbon’s housing models of 16-

18 centuries through the analysis of a determined area. th

Seeing that housing buildings constructed before mid-18th century are

currently the ones most immediate risk of cease, was this study intent to register and analyse examples inside this timeline. While focused on common housing, all housing buildings are considered due to the inseparability of common and erudite housing in Lisbon’s organic historical urban tissue.

Five types of building of plurifamiliar common housing were identified, regarding their functional distribution of dwellings and vertical accesses. These regular features can help to drawn a strategy of adaptation to modern living standards during a process of rehabilitation, a crucial point considering this work’s goal in suggesting ways of living today in spaces build for the past, while keeping their essential character.

Methods

The process of investigation was divided in three components: theoric

research, field work and analysis through comparison. Field work begun with consultation of archive processes in Arquivo Municipal de Lisboa, in order to list an adequate number of study cases based on the extent of information available. Afterwards building surveys were in order, with direct observation of dwellings and access layouts.

The information gathered through these sources was analysed by com-

parison of possible reconstitutions of the original state of edifices.

Housing of ‘Ancien Régime’ in Santana’s Hill

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1. Santana’s Hill

For purposes of analysis, an area of identical morphological character-

istics was drawn in southern Santana’s Hill, one of the seven that surround the central settling of old Lisbon. The study area is believed to have been firstly occupied during the late 13th century seeing, among other factors, that it was included in the area inside the Fernandine Wall of defence of 1375. The consolidation of the urban tissue was, though, a slow process.

The fact that it was the inner city’s part located further away from the

river meant a low interest in establishment both for working class and noble families. On the other hand, religious orders found here the space needed for building large equipments, such as convents or schools – later transformed in hospitals.

Due to progressive settlement, the study are can be divided in three

parts: on the beginning of the sloap – Calçada do Garcia, Travessa de Santana – the urban tissue goes back to medieval times and is still drawn in a mazy Islamic fashion; the first half of Calçada de Santana –inside the Wall limit – corresponds to a period of expansion around the 16th century, with rectilinear plots; and the northern half of Calçada de Santana was edified from 18th century on, resulting in larger plots and buildings, and the consequent increasing number of noble houses and higher-class multi-familiar buildings. The destruction caused by 1755’s earthquake resulted on massive re-edification in all the three areas, mostly recovering the previous solutions of edifice, although some experimentation and addition of floors might have occurred.

In the 20th century the demolitions of great part of lower Mouraria to

open Martim Moniz square caused the disruption on the organic urban tissue spread between the Castel Hill and Santana Hill. The high density urban quarter of Santana was then isolated in between the largest squares and avenues of Lisbon, becoming a central area that is neither a place of transit or settling.

2. Housing Typologies and Types The housing models of the 16th-18th centuries are easily recognised for a group of matching characteristics of construction and façade display. Features as the apparent asymmetry in the disposition of openings in common housing buildings, window and door’s wide stone frames or tiled roof slopes parallel to One vertical access per plot

the street are good identifying factors. The use of natural materials is also common ground, being stone – walls -, wood – stairs and pavements -, and limestone mortar the most used ones.

In common buildings were identified three main families of dwelling display logic. These are: the building with one dwelling per floor and lateral con-

Multiple vertical accesses per plot

Fig. 01 - Scheme of access and dwelling distribution

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tinuous ‘one-flight-per-floor’ staircase; the two dwellings per floor edifice with central stairs; and the long building of modular structure with more than on vertical access [Fig. 01].

Housing of ‘Ancien Régime’ in Santana’s Hill

Inside the house, the divisions are almost always planned on two systems: aligned and in ‘front-back’. These two planning systems are not connected

SOCIAL

PRIVATE

UTILITY

(a)

in the number of internal spaces, seeing that there can be found 3 to 5 compartments in both floor plan schemes [fig. 02].

Em linha

(a)

(b)

3 DIVISÕES The types are thus identified through overlapping of family building and Frente e trás

(b)

internal logic of dwelling, producing, among the 33 examples studied in this de-

CONFIGURAÇÃO limitated area, five types of common housing.

INTERIOR Building distribution logic

+ de 3 DIVISÕES Dwelling inner division logic

Em linha

(c)

Type Frente e trás

(d)

SOCIAL (c)

PRIVATE UTILITY

(d)

Aligned

A

Front/back

B

Aligned

C

Front/back

D

Front/back

E

Fig. 02 - Scheme of inner space organization possibilities found: a) three divisions aligned; b) more than three divisions aligned; c) three divisions in ‘front/ back’; d) more than three divisions in ‘front/back’.

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Fig. 03 - Synthesis scheme.

Type A

The first identified type belongs to the family of one dwelling per floor

and lateral staircase, with aligned divisions. This type has been identified by several authors in different neighbourhoods of historical Lisbon, and is probably the most frequent at city level. In this study it has been represented by 35% of the cases.

Type A is characteristic of narrow rectangular plots and clearly an urban solution of house model, as it occupies the least possible length of street front.

Therefore, the façade is a slender one, with higher dimensions in height than in width and generally only one opening per floor. In the original form, these examples had two or three floors and were added with new ones after the reconstructions post-earthquake1 until the beginning of the 20th century.

7 6 5 4 3 2 1

The original stairs are always of the ‘one direct flight per floor’ type, but have evolved to different forms with the risen in height of buildings. That evolution was done through the adding of a new flight perpendicular to the first or

12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

the implantation of staircases or double flights with landing, from the beginning of the 18th century on.

Unless specified otherwise, ‘earthquake’ refers to the destroyer earthquake of the 1st of November, 1755, which, due to the immense destruction brought upon Lisbon and southern Portugal, is still imprinted in people’s minds and concerns.

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Fig. 04 - Standard plan of Type A buildings. Scale 1:150.

Types and ways of living

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The layout of the dwellings is divided in three – or four – spaces aligned perpendicularly to the façade, with progressive specialization of functions from front to back. The living room is located next to the main façade, and the kitchen - and later the WC’s – at the back. In between is the private area, with one or two bedrooms. This housing type is the most rigid of all identified, to due the slenderness of the plot and unmoving position of stairs.

Type B

As the type before, type B is one of one-dwelling per floor and lateral

staircase building. The difference to type A is on the floor planning scheme, with the divisions being draw in a ‘front-back’ approach. The living space stays located at front while service and private areas stand side by side at the back. The internal dividing walls are simple, as it takes only two placed in T shape to define the three compartments.

The plot is, on average, slightly wider than type A’s and substantially less deep. This might the reason of the distinction in space distribution, as a short-depth plot could not accommodate the same three functional areas in line disposition. This distribution has the obvious advantage of allowing openings in Fig. 05 - Standard plan of Type B buildings. Scale 1:200.

every division – when the aligned disposition has windowless bedrooms. As in the previous type, the private area can be divided in the bedrooms.

The same way the divisions cannot fit if displayed in progression towards the end of the plot, neither can the stairs. The short depth of the plot is one of the reasons for the evolution of the stairs on this type mainly towards a ‘protopombaline’2 system of vertical access, where a corridor parallel to the flight of stairs assures the connection between overlaid flights.

Type C Moving to types of two-dwellings per floor and central staircase, type C presents an interior layout based on aligned divisions, being therefore a duplication of type A. Although is known through other studies conducted in Lisbon that the stairs can be of the continuous ‘one-flight-per-floor’ type, in the examples found on Santana they were always of the ‘protopombaline’ type above mentioned.

In one of the cases, located on Calçada de Santana 202-206, the similarities with the ‘protopombaline’ building go further than the stairs layout, as it

Fig. 06 - Standard plan of Type C buildings. Scale 1:200.

shows two balcony windows each side of the central axis row of windows meant for stairway illumination.

Type D Type of two-dwellings per floor with central staircase and inner disposition in ‘front-back’. Of the three cases found inside the study area, none have Term coined by Maria Helena Barreiros in ‘Prédios de Rendimento entre o Joanino e o Tardopombalino’, Património Arquitectónico, 2010.

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Housing of ‘Ancien Régime’ in Santana’s Hill

the same features in stair type or number of inner compartments, indicating perhaps that the construction of this type has spread in a wide period of time, allowing experimentation and transformations to happen.

The stairs type go from parallel ‘one-per-floor’ flights without middle landing, to ‘protopombaline’ with parallel corridors and opposite flights with middle landing, although in this last case the irregularity of shapes makes it probably an experimental solution from the beginning of the 18th century.

Also the inner divisions grow on complexity, with the first case displaying three divisions with walls in T shape – as in type B -, the second four divisions with the partition walls in cross-shape and the third with five compartments,

Fig. 07 - Standard plan of Type D buildings. Scale 1:200.

two in front and three in the back.

Type E Type E refers to a short and wide type of building characteristic from rural areas of the city’s old suburbs. Without the demographic pressure of the inner-wall city, there was no need for high and slender construction, and the plots were occupied with buildings spread in width. The result was a modular building, divided in two or more groups of a central stair and two lateral dwellings, with two independent ground floor dwellings.

This modular logic was used through different typologies of building in history of Portuguese architecture, such as working-class ensembles of both 18th century and late 19th.

Erudite

The four erudite examples analyses belong either to the 17th century

Fig. 08 - Standard plan of Type E buildings. Scale 1:300.

classicist noble house type or the Baroque multifamily building typology.

The first kind has develops after the period of Restoration, as a mark of

style for old-blood, Bragança house supporter aristocratic families. By adopting a uniform housing style, a sense of class belonging was created, immediately identifying the owner of such house with a family of importance and antiquity.

This noble house style is marked with the austerity felt at the period, prevailing

Fig. 09 - Classist palace on Calçada de Santana, nº 170-190. Scale 1:300.

Types and ways of living

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on simple and dry lines and uniform openings. These would be of the balcony kind in the main floor, displayed above a frieze, and of simple square shape on floors above, when existent. The portal was the only element receiving a more complex and detail stone work, a mark of individualization inside the style.

The austere period of Restoration is followed by the Baroque arrival

during D. João V reign, hence being also mentioned as Joanino style. Inside the Baroque a new typology of house makes it appearance, the multi-familiar erudite building. Meant for renting, could also host the owner’s own apartment in the main floor. Differs from palace typologies on the sense of height and the intricate stone work of openings frames. The example found inside the study area has no indication of noble floor neither is façade hierarchy of floor planning layouts, making it a proper rental building.

3. Rehabilitation

The conscience of the need of preserving the city’s centres, that came

from the failure of the model of unsustainable expansion towards the periphery, is nowadays implanted and programs of rehabilitation are slowly coming to life.

Nevertheless, these processes can only be efficiently implemented if, and only if, they are based on correct knowledge about the items where its intervention will be held, that is to say, the historical centre and all its elements.

First, it should be clear what and where is the city centre that matters

to be preserved. Today the heritage classifications are mainly made upon individual buildings, and to lower extent, their surroundings, with the recognition, in recent years, of two compact neighbourhoods3 as heritage items in their whole.

These politics result not only in a profusion of unclear rules and legislation to be applied inside a fairly small area, but also leaves substantive grey areas of low or inexistent protection inside of what is considered to be the historical centre – and meaning that it can happen that two equal buildings standing side by side receive different levels of protection.

Second, the heritage politics cannot be imposed by the authority upon

owners and residents. Their collaboration must be sought and it would greatly help to dissipate owners antagonism towards the City Hall if the rules and constrictions of re-building inside the centre were clear and equal for all. Conservation works, although compulsory by law, should be incentivised and simple rules of maintenance passed on the population.

In matters of housing adaptation, there are two main issues regarding

the 16 -18th century house today: the lack of proper sanitary installations and th

small area of dwellings. Both were approach during the 19th and early 20th century by the addition of a WC in a balcony behind the house and over the backyard.

Today this solution is criticized for damaging natural ventilation and lighting, and 3

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Baixa Pombalina and Bairro Alto.

Housing of ‘Ancien Régime’ in Santana’s Hill

new WC are being built by the kitchen to allow plumbing and drain tubes to be located at one area. Also, divisions without natural light are used for this function or as storage space. More privacy between compartments is searched by attempts of implementing halls or corridors and area enlargement by joining two dwellings in a house.

4. Conclusions

It was possible, with the developed investigation, achieve three main

goals: register of examples of pre-Pombaline constructions and ways of living, and their adaptations through posterior needs of housing; identification of five types of common housing, showing a pattern of rules followed even outside erudite architecture; and verification of adaptability features, indicating the strong possibility of rehabilitation with maintenance of essential characteristics.

Five types of common housing were identified, regarding the positions and logic of vertical access inside the building – lateral, central and multiple and distribution and inner layout of dwellings – divisions aligned on in ‘front/ back’. Types A, B and E appear to be the earliest types, being A and B clear types of urban house, while E corresponds to type of rural influence, used in areas of low urban density. Types C and D are direct evolutions of types A and B, by duplication of dwellings – two per floor –and therefore later types.

Type A is at the same time the most frequent type to be found in the area and the most rigid in its functionality, making it the hardest type to adapt to modern living standards in rehabilitation processes.

This investigation hopes to contribute with relevant data to the future development of correct strategies of rehabilitation of housing in historical centres while adapting it to modern living standards. These strategies must be drawn according to the type of building seeing that different characteristics in dimensions, dwelling logic or inner division will necessarily have different solutions.

Moreover, if the intend of preservation of the whole historical centre is one to take ahead, it should be of use a clarification regarding its own boundaries and status. Nowadays different heritage classifications are made by different administrative entities, making the rules of protection very unclear. It is believed that having the same level of classification upon the whole historical centre would contribute to its effective protection.

For full understanding of the pre-industrial common house typology, the results obtain here should be read along other data collected by different authors in other areas of Lisbon’s historical centre.

Types and ways of living

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