Architects of the State: The Rebuilding of Lisbon and the Portuguese Public Sphere, 1755–77

“Architects of the state” examines the changes in Lisbon’s architectural and social landscapes that resulted from the Lisbon earthquake of 1755.  It draws largely on Jürgen Habermas’s analysis of the public sphere and T.C.W. Blanning’s concept of “representational culture.”  I argue that the earthquake acted as a catalyst for a dramatic shift in which Portugal’s representational culture gave way to the rise of a Portuguese public sphere under the leadership of the Portuguese minister, Marquis of Pombal.  Pombal used the earthquake as an opportunity to shift Portugal away from the epistemological paradigms that had sustained the nation's representational culture. 

Before the earthquake, the ostentatious architecture of the Catholic Church and the royal court embodied Portugal's representational culture.  In 1755, however, a massive earthquake destroyed cathedrals, grand palaces, private libraries, and other buildings that displayed the pomp and ceremony of the Portuguese elite.  It provided Pombal with the opportunity to wrest power from the Catholic Church by emphasizing the need for a secular response to the earthquake.  His efforts to secularize the nation coincided with his desire to reorient Portugal’s political economy around a public sphere based on commerce and trade.  To achieve his goals, he diverted state resources from the Church and the court and invested them in commercial enterprises and public projects.

The architects hired by the Portuguese state to rebuild Lisbon not only rebuilt it physically, but socially as well.  They redesigned the city center, and Pombal renamed it from “Palace Yard” to “Commerce Square.”  In planning the reconstruction of Lisbon, Pombal focused on a simplistic, utilitarian design.  Architects designed buildings and streets with an eye toward uniformity rather than variation.  Although Pombal’s actions did not signal an undergirding commitment to equality, they did restructure Lisbon in favor of the public rather than the elite.

 This project lends itself particularly well to a poster presentation.  Paintings of pre-earthquake architecture, depictions of the destruction caused by the earthquake, and architects’ blueprints for the redesign of Lisbon lay out the argument in its various stages.  Displaying the three sets of images side by side will present a tidy summation of the central argument.

Although historians have long recognized the transformative nature of the Lisbon earthquake, this project brings disparate ways of analyzing it into conversation.  Pombal's commitment to scientific explanations for the earthquake, his struggles with the Catholic Church, and his efforts to rebuild Lisbon in a more simplistic style all went hand in hand with his goal of committing the Portuguese state to the enhancement of the public sphere.