Affordable Futures Past: Rethinking Contemporary Housing Production in Portugal While Revisiting Former Logics

This article focuses on a specific term associated with the scientific, theoretical, and academic discourse on housing architecture in Portugal. Over the last 100 years, the term “affordable” has frequently been used in the vocabulary of urban housing in Portugal, being linked to other words commonly used in housing construction, such as económica (economical), barata (cheap/inexpensive/low-cost), pobre (poor), cooperativa (cooperative), or even custos controlados (controlled costs). Therefore, we propose to explore the multiple appropriations and contemporary shifts in its original meaning, seeking in this way to: (a) further stimulate the contemporary discussion on types of buildings, public housing programmes (i.e., following a historical perspective), contemporary housing policies (e.g. Basic Housing Law and New Generation of Housing Policies), refurbishment policies, new regulations, and new models for the middle classes (in Portugal); (b) share perspectives about the updating of this concept and the materialisation of its respective types and models in contemporary architectural practice; and (c) build bridges between the past and the present (public and private models and solutions, and shifts in the target audience). Although a wide range of different words was used to describe “affordable housing” in Portugal from the early 20th century to the first decade of the 21st century, it is essential to stress the importance of several newly emerging concepts. In recently implemented laws, concepts such as economicamente acessível (economically accessible) and custos controlados (controlled costs/low-cost) encompass the shifts in the meaning of the term “affordable” and broaden the contemporary discussion of the housing problem in relation to the type of property and target audience.