In Memoriam — Nuno Portas (1934–2025)

Igreja do Sagrado Coração de Jesus (1961–1970).

Architect Nuno Portas (1934–2025) was one of Portugal’s most influential voices in architecture and urban planning. He was the co-designer, together with Nuno Teotónio Pereira and Pedro Vieira de Almeida, of the Igreja do Sagrado Coração de Jesus (1961–1970). This landmark church was awarded the prestigious Valmor Prize — Portugal’s highest annual architecture award — in 1975, and it was recognised as a National Monument in 2010.

More importantly, however, after the Carnation Revolution of 1974, Portas became Secretary of State for Housing and Urban Planning in the first three provisional governments. In that role, he was one of the driving forces behind the groundbreaking SAAL programme, which placed residents’ participation and collective input at the heart of urban development in the new Portugal.

SAAL — Serviço Ambulatório de Apoio Local — was an experimental, government-funded architectural initiative that ran from 1974 to 1976 across Portugal. After the fall of the dictatorship, the country faced the urgent challenge of tackling the appalling living conditions in the Bairros de Lata — the sprawling slums that ringed many Portuguese cities. One event that had already set this process in motion years earlier was the construction of the 25th of April Bridge in Lisbon — then called the Ponte Salazar — which forced entire communities from these shantytowns to be relocated.

   SAAL - BOUÇA project, Porto, Portugal by Álvaro Siza

On my first visit to Portugal, in 1986, I sought out several SAAL projects designed by architects like Álvaro Siza and Eduardo Souto de Moura. At the time, these projects were being discussed in Dutch architectural journals for their pioneering combination of design innovation and resident participation.

Compared to Dutch social housing, they did not always live up to expectations — many sites still looked unfinished — but what struck me most were the Bairros de Lata that still existed on the edges of the area.. Temporary structures of corrugated iron, plastic sheeting, or old printing plates.

Architect José Veloso talks about his work for SAAL.

Years later, on a drizzly 25th of April holiday, I watched the documentary As Operações SAAL (2007) at Cineclub Tavira. The film was introduced by architect José Veloso, one of the leading figures behind SAAL-Sul, the branch of the programme that operated in the Algarve. In just two years, around 2,500 homes were built here under SAAL.

The documentary reveals the many tensions between the ‘designing’ architects and the resident groups — in which women often took the lead.. There was joy at exchanging a 16-square-metre shack for a proper T2 house, but there were also complaints about architects who, for example, designed three different types of flooring for a single home. Some struggled to explain their modernist forms and colours to residents who were deeply rooted in local traditions.

Álvaro Siza, for instance, justified an unusual shape and colour for a housing block by declaring it a tribute to the German architect Bruno Taut. When officials questioned it, residents defended it passionately: it was a tribute to Bruno Taut, they insisted. Not every architect was as fortunate — one lamented that residents had ‘ruined’ his carefully planned houses by adding folksy touches like traditional chimneys and other decorations, turning them, in his words, into a ‘complete fairground’.

More than a historical document about a brief but pivotal post-revolutionary moment, SAAL remains a lesson for architects and communities alike — especially today, as displacement once again threatens the fabric of Portuguese cities. Too often, lower-income residents are forced to leave their neighbourhoods to make way for new developments and speculative investments that deliver homes far more expensive than what local families either want or can afford.

SAAL projects in Olhão:

Neighborhood 11 de Março / Neighborhood SAAL de Marim - Architect José Maria Lopes da Costa.

Single-family residential architectural complex. Economic housing for state public promotion (FFH / Operation SAAL). Medium-sized complex, made up of single-family townhouses with one floor and two floors with a patio at the back, forming blocks.

Neighborhood 11 de Março

District the 18e May / SAAL district next to the cemetery.- Architect Manuel Dias

Multi-family homes. Government Promotion of Economic Housing (FFH / Operation SAAL). A large complex consisting of multi-family homes of two to four floors that form open blocks. Including public public facility (soccer field/playground)

District the 18e May

Nuno Portas leaves behind a legacy that reminds us that housing is more than bricks and mortar — it is a matter of dignity, participation, and the right to belong.