VAULTED SOUTH | Vernacular vaulted houses in the South of Portugal

Talking with vault builders” is a set of two documentaries about the practical and scientific knowledge of vaults in the Alentejo, shared during two recorded interviews with four master builders experts on vaults, called “mestres abobadeiros”, from the Alentejo region:

The interviews were recorded in the end of 2023 in the scope of two events: The European Heritage Days 2023, promoted by Câmara Municipal de Moura; and in the construction site of a vaulted house, in Baleizão.

The master builders came from different regions of Alentejo and belong to different generations. With these documentaries it is intended to fix the memory of the know-how of building vaults that is about to be lost, to draw attention to this particular architectural and cultural heritage to promote its conservation and rehabilitation.

The project Vaulted South - Vaulted vernacular houses in the South of Portugal studies houses with brick vaulted roofs or floors and their respective construction processes, through architectural treatises and manuals and photographic and metric surveys of constructions, exploring the possibilities of Digital Humanities applied to the History of Architecture in the analysis and visualization of results.