Teaching Urban Morphology in Portugal

The main aim of this paper is to describe the way urban morphology can be taught in an academic environment so as to address the consequences of the modern way of life imposed by processes of urban development, while presenting an analysis of Portuguese reality. To do that, this paper is structured in four parts. The first part introduces the present situation of the Portuguese academic reality regarding the teaching of urban morphology, while offering a brief portrayal of the Portuguese institutes of higher education that incorporate the study of urban form, based on their curricula. The second part presents a specific case study while describing how urban form has been studied at ISCTE for the past 17 years, allowing it to be included in the national range of significant knowledge of urban morphology. The third part of this paper goes back to the origins of the actual academic situation, while: i) analysing the introduction of ‘urban morphology’ in the Portuguese academic curricula of architecture, by law 34:607 in 1945; and ii) briefly analysing the Portuguese cultural and political context at the time this law was decreed. The fourth part exposes the role of the 1948 National Congress of Architecture in this process, and finally, the influence of the law in the teaching of urban morphology at Portuguese Architecture courses, but also its implications in urban practice.