Optimistic Suburbia

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 Eurocentric 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.