Vila d'Este: retrato de um espaço público singular

• Autor(a) principal: Joana Vasconcelos Barbosa
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: https://hdl.handle.net/10216/144716
• topic: Artes; Arts

The main purpose of this dissertation is the analysis, understanding and exposition of the ways the public space of Vila d'Este (formerly known as Quinta do Monte Grande), the biggest housing complex in Vila Nova de Gaia and home of about sixteen thousand people, is used and appropriated. In an urbanization where the space designed by the buildings and infrastructural network is, sometimes, demarcated and discernible and, other times, undefined or dubious, this study aims, on the one hand, to carry out an analysis of the territory, aiming to differentiate the different typologies of public spaces that the urbanization offers and, on the other hand, to understand in what way these spaces are used and appropriated, always taking into consideration that variables like topography, the specific implantation of the building or circumstantial factors can impact, enhance or encumber certain practices. Starting from the direct observation of the daily experience of the citizens in space and from the analysis of the «traces» they leave in the territory, it is intended to expose the way they organize in the public space. More than an exercise of interpretation or exposure of the ways in which the public space is used in any given case study, the choice to study this urbanization is linked to several issues. Due to its size (unmatched in the urban fabric of the territory where it is located), particular characteristics of implantation, development hardships over the decades and diversity of the resident population, Vila d'Este seemed like the ideal laboratory to question the knowledge acquired during academic education, which is often taken as a tenet, assimilated and reproduced without major questioning. To carry on this exercise, it was primarily elaborated a theoretical framework where it was collected a series of contributions from different authors, which was useful to clarify the concept of «public space», frequently approached and discussed in the disciplines of Architecture and Urbanism and, nevertheless, object of multiple interpretations. In turn, in a second moment, we began the analysis of the selected case study, Vila d'Este. Starting from the historic framing of the urbanization, in which we sought out to expose its genesis, construction phases, rehabilitation and progressive integration in the urban fabric, this exercise continued with the analysis of the public space network it integrates, of the spacial categories it contains and of its appropriation, from a perspective (more or less) free of preconceived ideas about «public space». Fundamentally, this dissertation constituted an experimental exercise of analysis of the types of use and appropriation of the public space of a specific context, but, mainly, it was an exercise of deconstruction of asimilated concepts and of questioning of the disciplinary instruments commonly used.