Relevância do quarteirão na construção da identidade da cidade contemporânea: Porto, três casos

Abstract

This work focuses on the urban block as an element natural to the city. It does so, by diving into the development of the urban form that, from it's origins up to the present scale, allows us an unique perspective of the city's contemporary paradigm. This defining piece of the urban fabric projects in it self the trace of history, allowing an understanding on the city dwellings' transformations. In the following research, the aim falls into the city's block typology that characterizes Oporto's historical identity through a series of cases studies. The sight stands in understanding the human needs around the traditional shape of the block, by looking to the way they've been shaped throughout time and what defines them today. A delicate deconstruction of the urban block hierarchies so one can grasp its complexity and question its character. The block, especially in the Oporto context, has been dragged to contemporaneity summed by many constraints. It's gentrified spaces, left to abandonment or poorly use, aren't perceive as tools for a more inclusive city. By re-adapting the traditional urban block 'voids', one can restore a democratic access to the city center, aiming for a social cohesion that can better tackle the city's future needs. In order to intake the left potential and crucial role these spaces can have in the contemporary city, it's needed in first hand, to absorb how do people react to the shapes and scales they are left to live in. And only then, the elements that compose architecture can better and actively give resilience to the city. This work explores, in last resort, how can the traditional urban block's living tackle the city future needs. Understanding how architecture changes and how was changed by one of the main ways of city dwelling, allows us to clarify where and what to change. Architecture becomes a link between society and its environment. And, its by acknowledging this link, that future actions may become more aware.