A Arquitectura Rural do Baixo Lima. O Abandono da Casa Agrícola e a sua Transformação ao longo da EN204

• Autor(a) principal: Ana Rita da Rocha Fernandes
• Data de Publicação: 2019
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: https://hdl.handle.net/10216/123771
• topic: Artes; Arts

This Master's Thesis main theme is the study of the impact of the agriculturalabandonment in the Farm Houses located on Vila Franca and Subportela, villageslocated in Viana do Castelo's county. Those houses belonged to a rural bourgeoisieand whose dates of construction are comprised between the end of the 18thcentury and the beginning of the 20th century. These are established in a territorywhere small landholding agriculture is very characteristic, due to the division ofproperty present in Minho's region, resulting in intensive but unscientific farming.In the first half of the 20th century, the agricultural sector employed a large numberof active population, corresponding to about 50% of it, in 1950. However, thisnumber suffered a significant decline during the second half on the 20th century,being only 4% at the beginning of the 21st century. Besides agriculture being seenas unattractive, requiring a lot of work and resulting in low income, the aging ofthe population devoted to that sector of activity contributed to the large-scaleabandonment of that sector. Also the development of technological processes ofmechanization as well as the emigration phenomenon and the substantialindustrialization occurred in the second half of the 20th century were determinativeto that fact.Popular Architecture is one of the most important factors in the landscapinghumanization, in which the rural house, according to Veiga de Oliveira andGalhano, relates to a true agricultural instrument. It rises in response to severalconstrains, such as geographical, economic, social, historical or cultural. It alsoreveals proper adaptation of the dimensions and hierarchization of the spaces inresponse to accommodating people as well as animals, agricultural products andtools. Those houses underwent structural transformations related to the changesof the agrarian needs.Thus, the case studies allowed to develop an analysis of the architectonictransformations occurred in those agricultural houses as spaces linked to theagricultural production, either in sense of embracing the modernization ofagriculture, to incorporate different uses or the total neglection of the propertiesby the new generations.