About & Contact

ai-research.pt is a research cluster and website based at dinamia’cet-iul that addresses issues related to Criticism, Theory and History of Architecture with an impact on contemporaneity. The core is composed by a group of researchers involved in housing, colonial & post-colonial and gender studies, architecture and urbanism education and Portuguese architectural culture. We work as a team in building research networks, benefiting from the coordination and participation in projects funded by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia and the Cost Association. We deal with archives and heterogeneous documentation, from architecture drawings to films, we rely on field trips and oral history, we promote new historiographical and essayistic narratives that escape from traditional Euro-centrist views. We work in long chronological frames and broad geographies, focusing on the territories that have Portuguese as one of their languages, asking ourselves how they are positioned in the world.

We ask questions such as: what landscapes did colonial states build? What role did architecture play in the colonization processes? What colonial legacies in the field of territorial infrastructure have conditioned the nations of today? What impact does war have on the formation of rural and urban territories? Which agents are involved in the promotion of architecture? Where does the urban middle class live? Who are its architects? How are houses appropriated? How have women architects viewed the profession? How is the training of architects reflected in professional practices?

Starting from the strengthening of these and other research questions, we promote plural debates grounded on the current State of the Art, taking advantage of the different backgrounds of the researchers of ai-research.pt. All members are encouraged to participate in conferences and to publish papers based on teamwork methodologies. Audiovisuals and podcasts are some of the media explored by the group. We identify ourselves as an Arts and Humanities research cluster with a familiarity with technological areas.