A study of illegal housing of Lisbon built in 1974 to 1984 : from description to computation

A morphological description of illegal housing built by homeowners in the Metropolitan Area of Lisbon between 1974 and 1984 is presented. This description is based on a parametric set grammar that attempts to formulate both topological and geometric aspects of the house. Therefore, the grammar is made of shapes, symbols, and their relations in space. The architectural description herein considers aspects of structure, function and use. The main characteristic of this illegal housing is that design and building are here the inhabitant's responsibility. These houses are usually seen by society as a chaotic and ugly constituent of the built environment. Yet for the users these are dream houses, shaped with symbolic references that helped assure each homeowner a good assimilation into the big city. Three basic goals led to this study: first, to search for a better understanding of these dream houses despite their many contradictions, second, to find a formal representation despite the chaotic appearance and genesis of these illegal houses, and third, to contribute to the formalizing of a computer implementation that could help to prevent further echoes of this scenario.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2005

Author dc:creator

• Santos Romão, Luís António dos, 1958-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• William J. Mitchell and George Stiny.

• Architecture.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/33739
• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Identifier URI

http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/33739

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/33739