Following engineers and architects through slums: the technoscience of slum intervention in the Portuguese-speaking landscape

Abstract

This article revisits the long genealogy of State intervention in informal settlements and poorly built environments throughout the 20^th century, in cities such as Lisbon, Porto, Rio de Janeiro, Maputo or Macau, to better frame some socio-technical complexities involved in the current project of slum rehabilitation in Cova da Moura, Lisbon. Then, it draws upon ethnographic research with experts from the National Laboratory of Civil Engineering (LNEC) during a scientific assessment of informal dwellings to show that the “evaluation” of informal dwellings with a view to “reconfigure” them, is a socio-technical operation based on a “laboratorisation” of the dwelling, but one that is crucially dependent on the subjectiveobjective experience of experts.