Heterotopy and Transformations

Abstract

In the contemporary context of a profound crisis of public spaces in general and the Portuguese context in particular, questions of intensive touristification, fast gentrification, and concentrated immigration are reshaping the use and values of traditional urban spaces. The introduction of new public actors, new communities, and associated different social practices, often lead to feelings of estrangement and alienation within local communities while overlooking the potential of these reshaped public spaces to expose our limitations to accept and integrate a difference. On the other hand, the estrangement of urban spaces leads to the discovery of different ‘of-map’ and ‘invisible’ places whose use and value are also currently being rediscovered and/or shifted.

In this context, we propose the use of Foulcault’sheterotopia as a framework for the exploration of bothtraditional and invisible public spaces. We argue that due to its complexity and ability to embrace contradictions and conflicts, Foulcault’s heterotopia can be used as a valuable concept for describing, analyzing,and creating speculative designs for a new democratic city. Through the positive lens of heterotopias, we analyze twenty publicly accessible spaces in the citiesof Lisbon and Cascais, both traditional and invisible, trying to tackle their fragility and explore how theirconceptual redefinition can contribute to the idea of the social city. Moreover, we propose several architectural-artistic ad-hoc speculative designs based on the very contradictions and fragility of the analyzed spaces.