Self-Sufficient Architecture

SUSTAINABLE MONASTERY PROJECT

Abstract

To contemporaneity is set the challenge of persisting with scarce resources, confronted with vulnerable territories and constant climate changes. The modernity considered the natural resources as an inexhaustible source and an unlimited repository of waste.
The “Self-Sufficient Architecture” research project aimed to rethink the production systems of architecture and design under the principles of sustainability that may enhance the autonomy of local communities. In this sense, the settlement in rural territories will lead both to a greater autonomy and diversity for the integration of its local economy into a global network.
Therefore, it was necessary to propose an ecological balance between urban and rural areas, which was made possible through the intersection between architecture and urban planning with design, technology with economy and agronomy, and history with philosophy, in a real multidisciplinary and participatory approach. Hence the relevance of a built institutional compound that would guarantee the self-sufficiency of its inhabitants, which was only possible to take form according to the typology for a monastery.
In this sense, the case study was a monastery located in Couço, an Alentejo rural territory, hosting the Congregation of the Nuns of Bethlehem, the Assumption of the Virgin and St. Bruno. The project culminated in the development of its preliminary project, as a result of a protocol established between the Lisbon School of Architecture (FA-ULisboa) and this Congregation.

Development and/or results

From the development of the preliminary project for the monastery, according to a diagnosis of its social, cultural and scientific components, and based on the principles of living-building and participatory project, it was possible to identify the relations between factors and actors involved with the local community, through the establishment of a methodology of sustainable construction with growth phases and system maintenance.
The research team taught several academic formations, such as the curricular units "Social Project", "Research in Sustainable Project" and "Earth Architecture", as well as a workshop entitled "Ecologies of Architecture and Territory", and a theoretical and practical specialization course entitled "Eco-architecture - Methodologies of Sustainability".