Portugal Lessons - Environmental Objects. Teaching and Research in Architecture

Architecture is often seen as confronting the natural environment, its buildings and other objects inscribing boundaries and thereby expressing an internalized point of view. But there is another way of seeing and practicing architecture: By questioning the distinction between landmarks and the landscape they adjoin, architectural objects can themselves be environmental objects that amplify nature and increase our awareness of it.
Portugal Lessons is a project of laba, or Laboratory Basel, founded in 2011 as a satellite studio of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne’s School of Architecture. The book presents the studio’s case studies of the country and processes of urbanization. Rooted in laba’s latest research, it explores architectural forms of life and housing: whom we live with or open our home to and how permeable that boundary should be. The findings are presented in more than two hundred striking graphics, drawings, plans, and photographs. The book also features proposals for architectural interventions by laba’s students, all of them tackling issues of housing.

Harry Gugger is professor of architecture and director of laba, a Basel-based satellite studio of the EPFL’s School of Architecture, where Augustin Clément is an architect and teaching assistant, Barbara Costa is an architect and head of research, Tiago Trigo is an architect and teaching assistant, and Charlotte Truwant is a research assistant.