Batteries and Bunkers [WP3]
PI: Inês Moreira
Robust architectures and demilitarized landscapes in transition, such as coastal batteries and bunkers, are part of the legacies of the post-Second World War period that, losing tactical and military functions, resist defenseless and exposed to attacks, no longer by sea, but by trespass in land. This research focuses on the condition experienced after the military decommissioning of sites with a past of national defense, focusing on the sites of the former Portuguese Plan Barron whose robust architecture, underground structures and privileged panoramic location make them places of distinct civil appropriations for informal, playful and radical activities.
The contemporary condition of these architectures resonates with popular and video game imaginaries (from urban explorers to paintball) as they informally transform into renaturalized areas and are progressively re-appropriated by natural elements and by non-human beings. Abandoned, the sites display a dysfunction between places of celebration of the memory of National Defense and the progressive physical degradation, while they wait for new uses, whether as military heritage or as land for touristic and real estate development.
This Extreme Sites project workpackage brings together specific research on the Plan Barron started in 2022 and carried out throughout 2023.
*Research initiated in collaboration with Universidade Lusófona de Lisboa in the workshop on the Plan Barron and is affiliated with CEAA-ESAP since 2023.
Team
Inês Moreira
Beatriz Duarte
Flora Paim