The City in Dispute
>“The City in Dispute: Collective Experiments in Social Housing in Southern Europe (1949–1976)” documents, through drawings, publications, posters and banners, photographs, plans, models, and audiovisual material, radical initiatives in which communities collectively addressed architectural challenges in response to the housing shortage in Italy, Spain, and Portugal between 1949 and 1976
> The exhibition, curated by María García Ruiz and Moisés Puente, arrives to the Institute being presented at La Virreina Centre de la Imatge, run by the Barcelona City Council
>The exhibition, which will be open to the public until June 14, is accompanied by a supporting program featuring workshops for families and adults and a series of lectures running from April through May
What responses did architecture and its inhabitants provide in times of housing shortage in different historical political contexts? This is one of the questions addressed by “The City in Dispute: Collective Experiments in Social Housing in Southern Europe (1949–1976)” which opened today at The Basque Architecture Institute and will be open until June 14. The exhibition presents built projects in which architecture was conceived from the grassroots and communities to address the pressing problems of housing shortages in other eras and regions. These initiatives involved figures such as Pier Paolo Pasolini and Adalberto Libera in Italy, Father Llanos and Francisco Javier Sáenz de Oíza in Spain, and Elvira Leite and Álvaro Siza in Portugal.
The exhibition was curated by María García Ruiz and Moisés Puente for the Virreina Centre de la Imatge, run by the Barcelona City Council. The exhibition explores three major political contexts of the 20th century: the neorealist reconstruction of postwar Italy, the planned housing estates of Franco’s Madrid, and the experiments of the SAAL (Serviço de Apoio Ambulatório Local: Local Mobile Support Service) following the Carnation Revolution in Portugal.
The exhibition features original materials such as models and posters from the 25 de Abril Documentation Center and the Marques da Silva Foundation, complemented by reproductions of works held by more than 30 different institutions, including the Centre Pompidou, MoMA, the Serralves Foundation, the Casa da Arquitectura in Porto, Mitma, the Saenz de Oiza Archive, and the Regional Archive of the Community of Madrid.
During the presentation, José Ángel Medina, director of the Basque Architecture Institute, stated that the exhibition comes at a particularly opportune moment: “Given the current housing crisis, it is highly relevant to examine how, in past emergency situations, different state models generated diverse solutions focused on the collective dimension.” Medina also emphasized that the exhibition continues the institute’s line of work on housing, following the presentation of “Living together. European Collective Housing Award” in 2025.
Moreover, Pablo García Astrain, Director of Housing, Land, and Architecture of the Basque Government, emphasized that “this exhibition illustrates and demonstrates how housing and architecture are closely intertwined, and how great architects are forged through their commitment to the struggle for housing, viewing their profession as a service, architecture as a commitment, and housing as a cause.” As García Astrain explained, “this is an exhibition that speaks to us about the right to the city and the right to architecture; about how to achieve them and how to exercise them,” he added.
The three focal points of the exhibition: Italy, Spain, and Portugal
The exhibition is organized across two rooms at the institute, with the first room showcasing the different historical contexts of Italy and Spain, while the second room is dedicated to Portugal to highlight the SAAL initiative, as it is the most radical and least known of the proposals.
In Italy, the focus is on postwar Rome and the INA-Casa Plan (1949–1963), the first major social housing initiative in southern Europe in the 20th century. The exhibition explores the borgate ufficiali—housing complexes on the outskirts of Rome created by Mussolini’s fascist regime to relocate communities expelled from the city center—and the paradigm shift brought by the INA-Casa housing plan, the first major social housing initiative in Southern Europe, which transformed architecture into a laboratory of forms linked to the popular imagery of neorealism. The social and aesthetic squalor of the borgate was devastating, yet, paradoxically, it served as a source of vitality. This duality attracted intellectuals such as Pier Paolo Pasolini, who documented this reality in his novel “Una vita violenta,” featured in this section alongside various photographs by Rodrigo Pais. Pasolini criticized how the construction of a modern Rome was destroying unique ways of life and imposing cultural homogeneity.
Against this social backdrop, the postwar Italian government launched the INA-Casa national plan for public housing construction and job creation in 1949, involving leading architects in the construction of social housing for the first time. Among them was Adalberto Libera, a leading architect of the modernist movement in Italy.
“The City in Dispute” showcases two examples of the paradigm shift brought about by INA-Casa. One of these is Adalberto Libera’s Tuscolano neighborhood, a mixed-use housing complex featuring courtyard houses and high-rise apartments, where this shift is evident in the design of highly expressive architecture with modern lines, with particular attention paid to communal spaces for residents. Reproductions of hand-drawn sketches, historical photographs, and plans from the Centre Pompidou bring us closer to this reality from the mid-20th century. Also on display are plans and photographs of the Tiburtino neighborhood, designed by Mario Ridolfi and Ludovico Quaroni, from the Accademia Nazionale di San Luca.
Poblados: A Hub for Experimentation and Self-Management
In Spain, the exhibition focuses on the planned housing estates of Franco’s Madrid in the 1950s. The centerpiece of this room is a mosaic composed of facsimiles of census forms on substandard housing from the Madrid Urban Planning Commission, revealing how the regime’s true concerns regarding these shantytowns focused more on measures for the moral control of the population than on issues of sanitation or overcrowding.
The case of El Pozo del Tío Raimundo—now the Entrevías neighborhood—shows how the arrival of Father Llanos spurred a process of self-management and collective experimentation that improved the living conditions of its residents. As in the case of Italy, some of the most radical architects of the time contributed to the construction of social housing. Such was the case with Javier Saenz de Oíza, whose project for the Entrevías neighborhood can be seen in the exhibition. The exhibition shows how, at the same time that the Franco regime promoted the construction of social housing, it went hand in hand with self-management movements such as the SUT. Between 1950 and 1969, the SUT (University Labor Service) mobilized nearly 14,000 students in more than 500 work camps.
In the Sunday work programs promoted by the SUT, university students helped workers build their neighborhoods, performing tasks so they could pay for the portion of their housing that was not subsidized using what was known as a “personal contribution.” The documentation on display in this section of “The City in Dispute” has been recovered thanks to the civic efforts of the association Amigos del Servicio Universitario del Trabajo, with whom a conference related to the exhibition will be held on June 3 as part of the exhibition’s closing program.
Also on display is documentation from the state-run housing developments of Orcasitas and Caño Roto, detailing which construction projects the SUT participated in.
El SAAL
The second room is dedicated exclusively to Portugal and the SAAL (Local Outpatient Support Service), a program created by the provisional government in August 1974 following the Carnation Revolution. The project supported communities facing severe housing shortages in cities such as Porto, and represented one of the most radical experiments in citizen participation in the history of 20th-century European architecture, resulting in the construction of more than 170 housing projects for 40,000 families over a period of 26 months. On display are posters and banners from demonstrations for the right to housing, as well as minutes, membership cards, and stickers from SAAL volunteers, along with the white paper documenting this process.
As in previous cases, the SAAL also included young architects who are now renowned, such as Álvaro Siza, all of whom were deeply involved in political and social causes, just like the other volunteers and participants in this initiative. “The City in Dispute” focuses on the northern zone of the SAAL, showcasing projects such as the São Victor housing complex in Porto. This project perfectly exemplifies the concept of the “Proletarian Island,” linked to the workers’ housing of the early industrial era. Siza redefined this concept both conceptually and materially by connecting the isolated clusters of workers’ housing from the early industrial era with the rest of the city. Likewise, the section dedicated to Portugal documents the trip to Italy undertaken by prominent architects such as Nuno Portas, Álvaro Siza, and Alexandre Alves, who traveled to that country to share their experiences with the SAAL at architecture schools.
Finally, the exhibition concludes with an epilogue that recounts the end of SAAL, a movement that, despite coming to an end, lived on in one of Porto’s most humble neighborhoods, where the artist and educator Elvira Leite began an experimental project with the children of that community. This initiative lasted about two years and involved developing collective proposals to be carried out in the street, with very few resources and a great deal of ingenuity. This same spirit will serve as a guide for the “Express Yourself” workshop on May 23 and June 13.
Supplementary program
The exhibition is accompanied by a program of activities designed for both families and specialists. As part of the family workshops, under the general title “L con H / Express Yourself,” two types of activities are offered for families with children aged 6 to 12 and adults, from 11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., free of charge and in a bilingual format.
The “L con H” workshops, to be held on April 18 and 25, aim to explore the combinatorial possibilities of architect Rafael Leoz’s “Hele” module—a study of modular construction developed in Spain in the 1960s that sought to industrialize social housing without sacrificing spatial flexibility.
The “Express Yourself” workshops, scheduled for May 23 and June 13, invite participants to collectively create posters, banners, and flyers as a way to express the fundamental right to housing, drawing inspiration from the activist spirit of SAAL and the work of artist and educator Elvira Leite. Registration is free and can be done by emailing edu@eai.eus.
In addition, the Basque Architecture Institute will host a series of lectures related to the exhibition’s content, with sessions scheduled for May 6 and 20 and June 3, as part of the exhibition’s closing program, featuring members of SUT. Details about the speakers and topics will be announced shortly at www.eai.eus.
About the curators
María García Ruiz is a visual artist and researcher with a bachelor’s degree in architecture, a master’s degree in art and design research, and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in philosophy. Her practice focuses on artistic research through architecture and critical thinking, exploring the relationships between the body, space, and conflict. She has participated in exhibition projects at institutions such as the Vienna Secession, MUSAC in León, and TEA in Tenerife, among others. Moisés Puente studied architecture at schools in A Coruña, Rome, and Barcelona, and has had a long career as an architecture editor at Editorial Gustavo Gili and as editor-in-chief of the magazine 2G. In 2016, he founded Puente Editores, a publishing house specializing in art and architecture essays.
