An Archaeology of Utopia is a digital platform that brings together documentary, artistic and essayistic records of the 75 neighborhoods built during the revolutionary period under the Mobile Service for Local Support (Serviço de Apoio Ambulatório Local - SAAL), and which resulted from the intensive and collective effort of a people who claimed a fundamental right: a decent home, a neighborhood and a city, for one and all.
Although several neighborhoods have been the subject of research, publications and exhibitions, rarely has this housing program been presented in its true scope. Based on summary documents such as the SAAL White Paper and the inventory made by José António Bandeirinha, all the projects that were built are mapped out through an interactive database that is permanently open to new contributions.
The purpose of this platform is not to promote a nostalgic return to historical circumstances long gone, but rather to create conditions to look at the neighborhoods in the present and to the evolution that these communities have been experiencing for almost five decades of democracy. The aim is to document, in different formats, the layers that make up these urban fragments, as well as the way in which these typological experiences have influenced the structure of their urban context and the way of life of their inhabitants, their sense of belonging and the various ways in which they express their conviviality. In essence, it intends to expand an imaginary of ways of producing space to make city, making it accessible to the general public.
