Abstract
This work investigates how uncritical material choices in domestic and community architecture—even those tied to cultural identity—can erode human health, ecological resilience, and social equity. Focusing on Urgeiriça, Portugal—a former mining town where uranium-rich granite was used to build homes—the study reveals how domestic spaces, typically envisioned as sites of care, comfort, and belonging, become landscapes of invisible, cumulative risk through persistent radon emissions. These slow-acting hazards quietly infiltrate daily life and expose tensions between cultural preservation and public health. Through an interdisciplinary approach that combines material analysis, environmental science, and oral histories, the research explores granite’s troubling paradox: a marker of Portuguese heritage and a source of environmental toxicity. Urgeiriça serves as a case study to examine systemic failures in “natural” material governance, revealing overlooked care infrastructures while centering community advocacy for spatial justice through participatory design. The work makes three contributions: (1) it traces how community activism transformed scientific evidence into Portugal’s first radon remediation policy and new models for participatory material governance; (2) it redefines construction materials as active agents of cultural identity and biological risk; and (3) it positions architecture as a negotiation between matter and memory. By foregrounding Urgeiriça’s precedent-setting remediation, the study contributes to urgent discussions on healthy materials in architecture. It underscores the ethical imperative to question revered material traditions when they silently endanger life, offering transferable methods for addressing toxic heritage in global contexts.
Presenters
Joana RafaelPost-doctoral Researcher, Architectural Studies, CEAA | Centro de Estudos Arnaldo Araújo, Porto, Portugal
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
TOXIC HERITAGE, RADON EXPOSURE, ARCHITECTURAL MATERIALS, BUILDING HEALTH, ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE
