From Landscape to Garden-with Wildflowers Meadows

Since the middle age wildflower meadows are used to bring the flowers from the natural and rural areas into urban landscapes. Wildflowers meadows can improve the quality of Green Infrastructures as they increase biodiversity. However, after a few centuries of given flowers a principal part, lawns started to be used in every kind of places leading to a green obsession. Nowadays, urban lawns are cover more than 70% of urban green spaces all over the world. Frequently design options aren’t environmental or economical friendly, and lawns are this example. Lawns are green deserts with low biodiversity, and unsustainable. Wildflower meadows are an alternative to lawns, more sustainable, less resources consumer and much more biodiverse. In the regions with a Mediterranean climate water is a limit factor, especial in summer.

La transformación del tejido urbano en el mercado de Andújar

The commercial activity is and has been fundamental for the development of the society and our cities. We cannot forget that the medieval city was a market in itself. These urban spaces, as well as the new spaces generated after the different sales of Church lands, have been transforming continuously both from the point of view of urban development and social. In these spaces took place leisure activities as well as the exchanges and sales of products. Later, markets were transformed into covered spaces as we know today. Nowadays they are reflection objects. This abstract tries to make known the interesting and avant-garde Andujar Market, Pedro Rivas Ruiz`s architect work. It was built in 1949 and was inspired in Eduardo Torroja`s work with reinforced concrete. Its urban context`s relation explain this studio since the market was built on the place of the convent of San Francisco. This research is part of the result of the development of my thesis.

Found lost and alive cities in virtual exhibitions. Arab World and Europe (1815-1918) a bridge to a cultural and architectural dialogue

Our proposal is to go around the thematic virtual exhibitions that we have prepares to Museums With No Frontiers - Cities and Urban Spaces 1815–1918, visibly embodied in alterations to the urban plans, views and architecture. – see: http://www.sharinghistory.org/

Rethinking Le Corbusier: Urban Design and History

It is generally assumed that Le Corbusier’s urban planning made a break with the past, and that the public spaces designed by him had nothing to do with anything that existed before – a conviction fostered by both the innovative character of his proposals and by the proliferation in his manifestos of watchwords that mask any evocation of the past – words like civilisation machiniste, l’esprit nouveau, l’architecture de demain. However, in his writings, Le Corbusier often mentioned the powerful analogy that exists between the architecture of other times and the logic of modern production. Vers une architecture, for example, contains a mixture of photographs showing silos, cars, aeroplanes, ships (i.e. the fruits of 19th and 20th century civil architecture and mechanical engineering) alongside photographs of Greek and Roman buildings. While Le Corbusier, at the end of the 1920s, claimed “I have only one teacher: the past; only one education: the study of the past”, a series of sketches in the first volume of the Œuvre complète, done during his youth at the archaeological sites visited during his Grand Tour, shows that his interest in the past went far beyond a simple reference.

Urban-rural connections and development perspectives in Portugal

Portugal is characterized by a significant asymmetry in the population distribution/density and economic activity as well as in social and cultural dynamics. This means very diverse landscapes, differences in regional development, sustainability and quality of life, mainly between urban and rural areas. A consequence coherent with the contemporary dynamics: urbanization of many rural areas that loose their productive-agricultural identity and, simultaneously, the reintegration in urban areas of spaces and activities with more rural characteristics. In this process of increasing complexity of organization of the landscape is essential to restore the continuum naturale (between urban and rural areas) allowing closer links to both ways of life. A strategy supported in the landscape, which plays important functions for public interest, in the cultural, social, ecological and environmental fields. At the same time, constitutes an important resource for economic activity, as underlined in the European Landscape Convention. Based on this assumption, and using a multi-method approach, the study aims to analyse a) the links between urban and rural areas in Portugal and b) the reasons why these territories are chosen by individuals as places of work and mobility, residence or evasion, culture and leisure, tranquillity or excitement – meaning overall well-being. Primary information was obtained by a questionnaire survey applied to a convenience sample of the Portuguese population. Secondary data and information will be collected on the official Portuguese Statistics (INE and PORDATA). Understanding the urban-rural links is essential to support policy measures, take advantage from the global changes and challenge many of the existing myths.