O Encontro Nacional de Arquitectos em 1969. A reprodução das tensões sociais, culturais e políticas no âmbito profissional da arquitectura

At the beginning of December 1969, in the aftermath of the elections, the National Meeting of Architects (Encontro Nacional de Arquitectos – ENA) was held in Lisbon at the Sociedade Nacional de Belas-Artes (National Society of Fine Arts). The platform for this meeting of Portuguese architects was not as formal as that of the 1st National Architecture Congress held in 1948. Perhaps for this reason, the issues that were debated related more to actual professional concerns than to the post-war technical and social consensus shaped at the time by the anti-regime front, on the one hand, and the vitality of the Modern Movement, on the other. Evoking this meeting forty years later involves once again raising certain questions that are of crucial interest to the present day. In 1969, in the rather restricted circle of a professional class such as architects, the predominant tensions in the more intellectualised sectors of Portuguese society were reproduced. We may ask whether, or to what extent, this process of reproduction continues today. Is it possible to speak of a class-based social involvement with what constitutes the social reality of a country? The answer that emerges is not simple and can never be linear