Modern Houses - Docomomo Portugal

Editors: Ana Tostões

Guest editors: Louise Noelle, Horacio Torrent

Keywords: Modern Movement, Modern architecture, Modern single-family houses, Modern living space, Architecture of happiness.
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.52200/64.I.5QBIMR6V

Devoted to the theme of single-family houses, given the key role they played in the ideal definition of the Modern Movement architecture, as a symbolic and functional affirmation of the utopian turning of dreams into reality, the aim of this issue is to consider the transformation of daily life, and to address the architectural challenges that arose from the joy contained in what we might call the “architecture of happiness.” As we continue to endure a pandemic that has now lasted for more than a year, docomomo wishes to declare that “till the moment, the best vaccine to prevent contagion was invented by architects: the house”. Thus, in response to the question “How should we live?”, it is intended to debate the house and the home agenda as an important topic at the core of Modern Movement architecture. Nowadays, the growing emphasis on wellbeing goes beyond the seminal ideas that modern houses were “machines à habiter” and is closer to an idealistic vision of a stimulating shell for humans, which is shaped by imagination, experimentation, efficiency, and knowledge.
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Editorial

The Home at the core of Modernity, an optimistic architecture
Ana Tostões

Introduction

Searching Paradise
Louise Noelle, Horacio Torrent

Essays

Chochikukyo: cultural property representing “Japanese Timber Country Modernism”
Akira Matsukuma

Houses beyond manifestos
Ruth Verde Zein

Casa Fullana: a model for modern living in the tropics
Andrés Mignucci

The House of Augusto H. Álvarez in Mexico City: an Integral Architectural and Personal Project
Lourdes Cruz

Modern Heritage, organic space, material permanence: Torres Posse House in Tafí del Valle
Horacio Torrent, Olga Paterlini, Anna Braghini, Laura Cuezzo

The Delcourt House: the last house by Richard Neutra
Richard Klein

Paganin House: a risen phoenix
Scott Robertson, Noni Boyd

A hidden beauty. Siza’s adequacy lesson at the secret and delicate MMH
Ana Tostões

Casa Albero: an architecture experiment
Silvia Segarra Lagunes

Documentation Issues

Modern Movement Houses in the Colonial Capital City of Nairobi
Yasmin Shariff