Skin, Architecture and Sustainability: Three houses in Alentejo, Portugal

Abstract: Sustainability is the topic of the moment. Most of the time, it's used wrongly or even just as easily consumed rhetoric.In the field of architectural research, and in the architect's work as an architectural professional who produces projects with the sole purpose of being realised/built, sustainability and its relevance require research in the field of "Project Thinking on Design" that speculates on other ways of acting and introduces alternative visions.Based on 3 case studies in Portugal, designed by 3 contemporary Portuguese architects, we propose, with this article, to study the relevance of the option of materiality, considered at the origin of the conceptual act and in the process of synthesis that is the architectural project and, with this, to legitimize the idea and open up space for architecture to be an integral part of the notion of culture as sustainability.

Keywords: Architecture, Inhabiting, Sustainability, Houses, Alentejo, Rammed earth, Brick, Lime, Materiality

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1005339

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