Architects in the countryside: doing fieldwork for the survey of Portuguese popular architecture

Abstract

This paper is centred on the Survey of Portuguese Popular Architecture, organized between 1955 and 1961 by the Portuguese Union of Architects. Based on testimonies and interviews with some architects who conducted the Survey, the paper aims at recovering the memory of the fieldwork on which the Survey was based. The paper is mostly based on the transcription of the interviews. These not only vividly recover the routines, adventures and incidents of the fieldwork, but also provide a very realistic portrait of rural Portugal in the 1950s.