Sophia and the cultural disalienation: architecting beautiful houses

Abstract

In an interview with Emissora Nacional, ten days after April 25, Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen defends the house as an image of the world. She points to cultural alienation as one of the great problems of the Portuguese people (and the peoples of the Western world) and defends the importance of the beauty of the home for the education of human conscience. In the Jornal Távola Redonda, in 1963, Andresen had already pointed to architecture as an expression of a "fair relationship with the landscape and the social world", requiring that "those who are going to build love space, light and their neighbors." Based on these ideas and the author's definition of culture, this article considers Sophia's house in connection with an ideal of wholeness. Reading the poem "Revolution", from April 27, 1974, it is asked: how can the act of building a house expand freedom?