Território de Fronteira, Lugar de Encontro

Abstract

The border territories extend from the 'raia seca'1 in the north-west of the Iberian Peninsula, inviting reflection on the significance of places of encounter. Rather than a sharp line, the border is conceived as a permeable space of proximity and solidarity. Amid bridges, gates, rivers, paths, and terraces, ways of life emerge that resist centralized policies, and suggest more collaborative future. This research analyzes three cases: the Couto Misto and Tourém; the Povos Promíscuos; and Rio de Onor and Rihonor de Castilla - places where historical, everyday practices of cooperation shape the local landscape. Here, the border is crossed by landscape, community, economy, and language, challenging imposed order and questioning the legitimacy of the defined limit. A decolonized understanding of the border enables architecture - in practice, research, and pedagogy - to move beyond the abstraction of separation mechanisms and toward the dismantling of barriers - whether physical, cultural, social or symbolic. From this perspective, the research approaches the territory through architecture, while recognizing the essential need for disciplinary articulation with other fields - such as anthropology, geography, and biology - with the local, international and scientific community, as well as institutions of different kinds, for example, Fundación RIA. The dissertation is structured in four parts - territories, border, places, encounter - supporting the hypothesis that cross-border cooperation, understood as a local practice rather than an institutional program, can be key to (re)thinking planning and architecture in border regions. To inhabit the border is to create places of encounter - fairer, more inclusive, and more balanced spaces - as a form of resistance to separation and disaggregation, in an ongoing and active search for cooperative practices.