Quem casa quer casa: apontamentos sobre a referenciação dos espaços

Abstract

“Whoever weds wants a home” (Quem casa quer casa.) is a popular saying that was also the title of a book that formed part of a long ongoing educational programme based on the premises of the Salazar régime. This was a notable work that attempted the promotion of a move towards the modernization of the traditional space of Raul Lino’s Casa Portuguesa (The Portuguese Home) through an accessible illustrated history, especially attractive to the reader inasmuch as it related to the home’s living space. Excerpts from this book will serve as the structure and foundation of this text, and which give rise to a number of questions – or “short stories” – relative to the new sense of the contemporary living space, to the search for new points of reference, or of the meaninglessness of many of these spaces. The final text comprises a critical comparison of these two worlds, a chessboard to be played by the reader; with the choice between the closed model of the traditional home that the architects were trying to break with in the 1950s, and the possibilities that the absence of that model gave to the liberation of the home of our times.