Exploring urban decay: stories of dereliction and ruination in a Lisbon street

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Spaces & Flows:

7th_{International Conference on Urban and ExtraUrban Studies} University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

Exploring urban decay:

stories of dereliction and ruination in a Lisbon street

Eduardo Brito-Henriques, PhD

Associate Professor

CEG, IGOT (Institute of Geography and Spatial Planning), Universidade de Lisboa Portugal

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This research has been sponsored by Portuguese national funds through the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT), I.P. – the Portuguese nacional agency for science, research and technology – under the Project PTDC/ATP-EUR/1180/2014 (NoVOID - Ruins and vacant lands in the Portuguese cities)

Support

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Problem & purposes

My purpose in this paper is to draw attention to the pervasive presence of voids and ruins in the contemporary city, displaying its huge variety of ruin forms. By examining that diversity, I believe that the multiplicity of causes of dereliction and ruination may be reached and

exposed. I also want to demonstrate that urban ruins are not 'blank spaces' but places that are deeply steeped in memories and emotions, participating therefore in the affective geographies of the city.

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To identify and describe the diversity of ruins in urban space

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To investigate the reasons of urban ruination and its dynamics during the course

of time

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A case study approach

A street that I know par$cularly well and intimately since I grew up and lived all my life in the vicinity

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Field notes, archive research, memories, and autoethnography

Over the course of the last forty years I witnessed many buildings fell into ruin, being demolished, and replaced by new buildings in this street. So, I use my own memories, notes I've been collec$ng over the years, archive research, and talks I've had with my neighbours

Methodology & case study

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The Junqueira-Pedrouços street is a 4 km long road that corresponds to the lane of the tramway nº 15, between the old industrial district of Alcântara and the limit of the Lisbon municipality, along the riverside front. It was one of the major historical axes of the city expansion to west, along which various layers of urbanization are found: palaces from 17th to 19th centuries, the Jerónimos

Monastery, old factories and working class housing, several kinds of 20th century apartment blocks, public buildings, private townhouses for upperclass, etc.. Mixed uses, different social classes, and buildings of different ages can be found there.

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7th_{International Conference on Urban and ExtraUrban Studies | Philadelphia, Nov. 2016 | Exploring urban decay}_{| E. Brito-Henriques}

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Ruins in Junqueira-Predouços street

Type of abandoned and ruined buildings

nº industrial 3 multi-family residential 6 one-family dwelling 13 Total 22 Period of construction nº before 1919 17 1919-45 5 Total 22 Period of abandonment nº before 1974 2 1974-85 2 1986-95 6 1996-05 9 after 2005 3 Total 22

•  the vast majority of abandoned and ruined buildings

are residential constructions

•  one-family dwellings are the most common ruined

structures; but there are also a small number of old apartment blocks from the 19th century / 1st half of 20th century that have been running vacant over the years and are now waiting for renovation

•  the most of abandoned and ruined buildings were built

up before 1919

•  Many of these ruins persevere in the cityscape for a

long time; recent ruins, lets say ruins produced in the last 10 years, are a few; some buildings were

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Ruins have sometimes a very discreet presence. As I began to walk the street up and down looking for abandoned and ruined buildings, I was able to verify that a few buildings that I had never before discerned that they were unoccupied and ruining exist. Ruination may be a slow and silent process. This allows us to get used to the presence of ruins around us. Many of those buildings were slowly emptying. Some people died and their houses were not reoccupied. The progressiveness of this process produces habituation, habituation produces indifference, and this indifference turns out sometimes in a kind of invisibility of the urban ruin.

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Abandoned spaces are often places of amnesia. This building was an old vacation property from the 18th century. In the 19th century, it was transformed in a casino. At the turn of the 20th

century, many of those old noble properties were parcelled out and manufactories were

established in them. This palace was divided and converted into small apartments for blue-collar workers. I remember seeing working-class people go up and down those stairs when I was a kid; there was a tavern here where men were drinking at the evening. Those tenants were all

disappearing over the last thirty years. The building belongs to a real estate fund today that wants to recover it into a luxury condominium. In my conversations with neighbours, I found no one who objects that project. Almost everyone regrets that a place such nice and elegant is abandoned. But no one spoke nostalgically of the proletarian past of this place. That and the deeper layers of the building's history were enveloped in a kind of amnesia. When I tell the people with whom I talk that there was a casino here, they look at me in amazement and a little disbelieving.

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7th_{International Conference on Urban and ExtraUrban Studies | Philadelphia, Nov. 2016 | Exploring urban decay}_{| E. Brito-Henriques} In abandoned and ruined buildings, personal memories occupy some$mes the space le? empty by public forge@ulness. Here is the Palace of the Counts of Ribeira Grande, a huge 18th century palace built and inhabited by the descendants of one of the discoverers and seHlers of the islands of Madeira and the Azores - Gonçalves Zarco. One of the members of this family was a poet and journalist who was the ﬁrst Portuguese writer to be nominated for the Nobel Prize for literature in 1901 - João da Câmara. All those facts are badly known. The house became impossible to keep by the Câmara family when the Republic was founded and the old noble privileges had an end in 1910. The building was leased to the state and transformed into a secondary school. A decade ago, the school was transferred into a new building. Every $me I pass here, I s$ll can see inside my head the young people coming in and out, taking the tram and speaking excitedly. Some$mes the faces of my old friends from young years come to my mind and I wonder what happened to all them.

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As a last note, let me say that abandoned and ruined buildings are not just places for lamentation and amnesia. They are also places of hope and utopia, fantasy and myths. One of the most

surprising abandoned places on this street is Palácio das Águias, a bourgeois palace from the 18th century which has been profoundly transformed in the 19th century according to French taste. A medical surgeon from Lisbon and his family were the last owners, but I do not remember seeing this building ever inhabited. Over the years, I've heard the most extraordinary stories about what's

going to happen to this building. The new that now runs is that it will be transformed into a luxury boutique hotel. But I have heard the most amazing fanciful stories for years, rumours that a museum would be opened here, unconfirmed news that the building was bought by an Arab prince, or that it was to be bought by a Hollywood star. Ruins are also magnificent places for hearsays.

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Conclusion

v  Urban ruination is a consequence of progress-obsolescence dialectic and it is part of urban

metamorphosis

v  Abandoned and ruined urban spaces are an integral part of the cityscape, being sometimes

seamlessly and almost invisible presences to which we have got used, other times rough presences impregnated with memories, fantasies and emotions.