Caminhar pela diversidade: Por uma (Com)posição do Colectivo

Abstract

The current dissertation rises of the necessity to understand, more deeply, the complexity of the public space. We have, however, opted for what we consider a reverse process. Instead of start by analyzing the vast bibliography that revolves around the subject, we chose to observe in the first place; and from this observation to raise questions, themes and problems that lead us to a necessary complexification for the interpretation of what public means. Using the City of Porto as fieldwork, we challenged ourselves to leave the house to collect signals that could make us understand the space. We build a purposefully non defined path due to the diversity of possibilities, where the diversity that we found clashes with some typical preconceptions of the analysis and practice of urban planning. We propose to eliminate those to make room for diversity. We highlight six places, Praça Marquês de Pombal, Parque do Covelo, Bairro de Paranhos, Via de Cintura Interna, the alley and Bairro do Outeiro. We put them under the eye of the magnifier in the expectation of understanding them. The multiplicity of signs presented by the spaces were not possible to accurately assimilate in the time of the project but the successive walks to the places revealed the most intense signs: the Dynamics; the Network; the (Non)existence; the Dissonance; the Chace and the Bricolage, respectively. We represented them and let the questions raised flood the research that was intended to be carried out; the number of entries that can be found in the dissertation is a symptom of the complexity of what the public means and the antidote for the lightness with which the topic is often addressed. This public is interpreted in this dissertation with the widest coverage as possible, from the multiple forms of characterization, but also in the way that it is read as a space category. Walking between the diversity and the indifference, put us in a position where we recognize the collective as a human necessity. Once this need is understood, there remains the interpretation of the forms of the collective composition and the position that it should take in the society.