Cannibalistic urbanism

Fernando Silva Grade, 55, studied biology but ended up dedicating himself exclusively to painting in Faro – where he lives and works. Nature is his one great passion. A blogger – someone who likes to take issues head-on, he’s been involved in awareness campaigns over the years in a bid to get the public to see the true portrait of this country.

You’ve been a critic of the “urbanism” that’s common in the Algarve, and Portugal in general. Why?

Fernando SIlva Grade: As an artist I’m very aware of things people produce. The house is the principal “human product” – and therein lies my fascination. At the same time, considering that architecture is also an art, it is the only art that we can’t get away from. If you don’t like a painting, a song or a book, you can easily ignore it – but it’s not that simple with architecture. It’s all around us. We function within it. In a way, it’s the art form that most influences the lives of human beings.

So what have you noticed?

Well, until recently, the elements Man used to build had a close interaction with Nature. For example, with regard to materials chosen, and forms too. In the old days, architecture was directly linked to the pulsar (centre) of the natural world.

If you consider traditional Portuguese architecture, everything about it reflected the immediate environment. Forty or fifty years ago, even big cities had a characteristic stamp linked to the climate, and the local materials of the area. This is still visible, for example, in Lisbon. So, in the old days, Nature was replicated within cities. The wood of the trees was in the windows; the stones and clay from the ground was used in the walls and on roofs. Today, there’s no longer this connection.

What’s happened to us?

In the Algarve, I can remember a time when architecture developed in the way I’ve just described – considered as part of the ecosystem. If you rotate the map of the Algarve to the vertical, you end up with a kind of miniature Portugal – and, intriguingly, both have a huge diversity of environments. In Portugal, for instance, you only need to travel 30 kilometres for everything to change – and in the Algarve, every place used to have its own special “stamp”.

It was a very special cultural “wealth” – and now that’s all gone. Everything’s been blended into a modern “ponge”. Like a brutal calamity that has simply destroyed all the heritage! It began 40-odd years ago; it spread through the country and has become our principal economic model: the building industry and property speculation. Profit has taken prime of place over all aspects of territorial planning and structure. What’s happened has been rampant, barbaric building.

So what have we today?

Well, in the old days we had Mediterranean towns where the street was where people socialised and met each other. It was an extension of people’s own homes. But then came the “American concept” of town planning: the whole dynamic moved to the function of the private vehicle.

What essentially happened in Portugal was that people were shunted to the side to open up space for the motorcar. The suburb has become the great Portuguese habitational paradigm. The overwhelming majority of Portuguese today live in these so-called “dormitory” settings. These days we’re building spaces of physical and spiritual horror for people to live in.

Do you think it’s still possible to reverse all this?

The problem is there’s truly no turning back. There’s no solution for what has been built. These days, Portuguese people live in horrendous neighbourhoods – where there are absolutely zero conditions for socialising. People end up living entrenched in these horrible places, faced with horrible lifestyles. Loneliness becomes a problem after a certain age – and, in these last 40 years, we’ve managed to create environments that are anti-natural, anti-human and anti-social!

While historic town centres moulder away…

Yes. Faro is filled with old houses that are literally falling to pieces. In a regional context, it’s the towns where centres were less pockmarked by cement and the introduction of apartment blocks that have suffered the most. It’s the reality of Portimão, Albufeira, Quarteira, Armação de Pêra. I remember all those places when their beauty was intact! It’s devastating to see the desperate chaos that rules there today.

My father was born in Portimão, and I used to spend a lot of time in Praia da Rocha – which today is a symbol of the worst form of barbarity and human stupidity and ignorance. Yet it used to be the most beautiful beach in Europe! They managed to ruin all that – not simply by building hideous blocks of apartments, but also by “injecting sand” onto the beach!

Do you think the current “landscape” could have a negative effect in the future?

Like I said, there’s no turning back. We’d need an earthquake of at least 9 on the Richter scale to alter the landscape now – and no-one wants that. So, putting that hypothesis to one side – and because we can’t simply blow everything up – we’re condemned to centuries of suffering within the artificial concrete environment that we’ve created.

In economic terms, yes, this will bring huge consequences in the future! Package deal tourism has had its day. The international context has changed: sustainable development is the new “thing”, and the society of waste and needless extravagance is coming to an end. The future predicts a whole new way of life: with cultural and natural tourism beckoning. But how can we attract quality tourism to a country that has destroyed its natural environment; and ripped out its cultural roots and heritage?

But the rural landscape is also not so beautiful anymore. You find builders’ rubble dumped under trees, and fields left untended…

The problem is that it isn’t simply the coast that has been destroyed. Because their cultural roots have broken down, people are left without direction in their lives, and thus their values are manipulated by consumerism and the ways of the “new rich”.

People have been transformed into the agents of destruction of their own culture and environment. I can give you an example that happens everyday: rural houses in states of decay that people restore, but which are rapidly transformed into monstrosities – thanks to PVC, aluminium, plastic-coated paint and tacky tiles. All the time, you see pieces of what used to exist here, alongside elements of this new “modern” Portugal. This new “nouveau-riche” Portugal…

Who are the guilty parties in this sad scenario?

Until very recently, the majority of mayors were the people most to blame for the route the Algarve has taken over the last 40 years. Official bodies have the greatest responsibility. If they’d had a minimum of sensitivity, they’d have taken steps to protect our popular architecture. But they didn’t.

The opposite happened. Every law was made to facilitate the concreting-over of the region. The guilty parties are those that make the orders, and those that follow them. When it’s like that, the rest of us are powerless.

You’ve tried to spread this message. What are the results?

What’s surprised me is that, considering this has been such a violent, aggressive, environmentally-UNfriendly process – that has been so destructive for our culture and identity as a people – how is it that people haven’t protested against it all?

Fortunately, more and more people are confronted with all the negative aspects that this new urbanism has created and, bit by bit, they are emerging from attitudes of indifference – realising that there’s something that’s very, very wrong. What I’ve seen is that people are beginning to wake up to this reality that is penalizing us all – but for many years, it was very difficult to get people to react to what I was saying…