Post no16 | What tools to account for the complexity of the territory?

In previous posts, was stated that the city must be perceived as a thickness of meanings, in three distinct cartographic levels.?

At an intermediary cartographic level, the “abstract morphological structure” enables to represent the socio-cultural motives distributed into zones. It also enables to make stable and intelligible the different concrete forms that one can observe on the apparent surface of a town.?

Consequently, the concrete forms in a geographic space do not develop in an aggregative way, reduced to a simple amorphous?continuum,?but are instead constrained by the deployment of an abstract morphological structure, which organises the spatial substratum into a whole gathering of political positions.

This structure is engendered by the dynamic topology internal to the urban morphogenesis. It is not conceived nor planned from the exterior, by a social actor, but results from a global process of spatio-temporal stratification (Marcos, 1996?: 80).?

In the example of the project for the?International?exhibition’s of 1998, Expo 98, which took place in the city of Lisbon, this integrative conception of spatial complexity revealed itself a fundamental tool for architects or urban planners.?

The city, through the project?of the Expo 98, succeeded in transforming its abstract morphological structure, stable since the Renaissance, as in creating new topological relations with the internal structure of the town, and even re-establishing, although timidly, its mythical ties with Tagus river.

Structurally, Lisbon is a town divided into two types of connections: one with Europe and the other with the overseas territories. These resulted in two types of urban organization, one at the East and other at the West of the?S?o Jorgehill, as I showed in my different researches on the town of Lisbon (see my papers online). The?internal dynamics of territorial appropriation and of the organisation of the human establishment, in this case the strong interactions on the waterfront,?have engendered an axis around which activities dependent on the political, religious and commercial power took place along the centuries. I called this axis?“of authority”.

Figure –The International exhibition project, Expo 98, has enabled the understanding of the manner in which an urban project can transform the profound structure of a town, by actualizing certain symbolic values.

The axis of authority has not evolved to the east since the Middle Ages, only progressively unfolding from the?Baixa towards the west,?ever since the period of discoveries.

In addition, the town had progressively cut its ties to the river. At first, as and when the merchandise originating from the discoveries ceased to arrive on the quaysides of Lisbon and, after, as and when the different industrial infrastructures were built along the sides of the Tagus, from West to East, as from the 19th?century.

The International exhibition project, Expo 98, was pivotal in unfolding the axis of authority towards the east, and it has importantly succeeded in re-establishing, even if timidly, the long-lost ties between the city of Lisbon and Tagus river.?In that manner, the new projects for the waterfront represent the re-establishment of these ties. The unfolding of the axis of authority towards the East and the re-establishment of his old ties with the river.

The Expo 98 project was fed by the plan for an international exhibition and made way for a new paradigm of urban development, and supported, although partially, the creation of a new urbanity, of great urban projects.

The project?Expo 98?has enabled the understanding of the manner in which an urban project can transform the profound structure of a town, by re-establishing certain symbolic values.

Thus, the architectural communication policies in this example from Lisbon reports that the urban form keeps the collective memory of a society. The success of this project is linked to the meanings that emerge from it.?

In a society where communication highlights values and meanings, the semiotics of space assumes all its relevance.