Façade retention in the city of Lisbon

Resonances, history and typologies

Abstract

This article focuses on the emergence and development of rehabilitation operations with façade retention and interior demolition in the city of Lisbon.
This type of intervention, commonly referred to as façade work, became widespread in the city from the end of the nineteen hundreds, supported by a cultural and socio-economic context shaped by legislation. Interventions of façade reconstruction are not novel in the history of Architecture and Urbanism; however, the proliferation of reverse operations is controversial in the disciplinary debate.
This article summarizes, delimits and interprets the roots of this type of intervention in Lisbon, aiming to clarify the motives and context of its vulgarization, including the socio-economic, cultural and normative situation, pondering also on its effects and limitations for the built space. For this purpose, it observes a series of interventions in Avenida da Liberdade, the archetypical urban axis of bourgeois Lisbon. Two chronological moments emerge: the pre-normative façadeism between 1980 and 1995, followed by a post-normative one, consolidated in the first decade of the new century and reflected in the present moment.