Thirteenth International Conference on Design Principles & Practices

Abstract

Miragaia, part of the Zona Histórica do Porto – a river town with an industrial and mercantile character – preserves a great part of its urban and geomorphologic primitive shape. Throughout the centuries, this site, connected to the Douro river, was the stage of a developing building activity. If, on the one hand, it received several transformations in the occupation of the buildings, which didn’t significantly changed the memory of the slopes, fruit of the anthropic action, and of the valley carved by the river Frio, on the other hand, human intervention changed the organization of the place, with the construction of great dwellings, which gave it a proper landscape. In order to better understand why Miragaia and its riverside surroundings became as we know them today, we have studied the development of the built heritage in a long diachrony. Based on a historical approach, we observed the contexts that led to the expansion of the study-case area, analyzing the evolution of occupation, urban framework, and architectural typologies. For the analysis, iconographical and cartographic sources were crossed with unpublished documentary sources that allowed us to establish relations and causal links. Within a city in constant transformation, construction follows the pace of change. When adapted to the needs of the changing times, a new occupation prolongs the life of any architecture, created to fulfill a function. This maintenance of the relationship between the built space and the green areas still contributes to the increase of the historical contextual value of Miragaia.