Participação Política e Organização do Espaço em Portugal: O Programa Polis e o Caso do Prédio Coutinho

Abstract

This dissertation proposes a critical analysis of the Polis Programs conception pro- cess, namely regarding the specific case of the attempt to demolish the Coutinho Building by the VianaPolis partnership. The case study inevitably refers to architecture's political proneness, which always has an urbanistic dimension here, and to the weakening of this tendency as concrete evidence of perverse political objectives and of market mechanisms action in the territory planning and public administration. Having said that, the present exercise focused on two guiding intentions: 1) to demonstrate the difficulty of combining the implementation of efficient public poli- cies with transparent democratic processes required by the emerging political culture during the turn of the century in Portugal, by analyzing the process conception and implementation of Polis Program; 2) to question the relationship between the politi- cal community and architecture, and the role of the professional community in this relationship, through the study of the conflict generated around the attempt to de- molish the Coutinho Building.