Ninth International Conference on The Constructed Environment

Abstract

These observations are the result of an ongoing PhD research in Architecture, which aims to understand the processes of landscape organization, over an extended period of time, focused on the relations established with the geomorphological structure of the territory. The research subject is the landscape around the city of Braga (in the northwest of Portugal), between rivers “Cávado” and “Ave”. In this paper part of the analysis of the spatial attributes of the centuriated landscape where the Roman city of Bracara Augusta came to settle is presented. The review starts with the formal aspects and the relations between the elements focused on the importance of the road network towards understanding of the new territory form. The observations are part of an architectural approach as the exercise of analyses is based on the project methodology. Settlement dynamics are therefore interpreted as the result of a spatialization process of relations established between people and the environment. The main gold is to understand the way the dynamics of preservation of the centuriation axes, associated to the retention of some paths related to the roman land records, help us think about the compositional relations in the contemporary territory. In this sense the interpretation of the Roman centuriation system may become the basis for the (re)establishment of relations that allow us to recover a given experience of time and space, which seems to us to be more adjusted to the narrative predisposition of landscape.