ABSTRACT
In the first half of the twentieth century, building practice in Olho, Leeward Algarve, drew upon what was perceived as a well-defined set of elements from local building traditions. Olho offers a unique case study on the way formal building discourse and practices appropriated references to vernacular tradition. This chapter addresses the antecedents of such a trend in local practice, questioning the extent to which this was a new metropolitan construct or a consequence of earlier developments in Olho's built identity. It examines the modernist discourse on local traditions through the analysis of public works programmes, where national projects encountered specific local demands. The chapter looks at the lineage of the notable, 1930s' trend of considering local, Cubist' architecture and its components as the inescapable source and reference. From being a footnote in Modern Movement history and a transitory stage in the rise to high modernism, the vernacular has come to represent alternately modernism's other and its foundation myth.
