Places of memory and contemplation: The rational and the emotions as fundamental elements to the conception of architecture integrated in the landscape

CIAUD-UBI, Research Centre for Architecture, Urbanism and Design - University of Beira Interior Hub, Rua Marquês d’Ávila e Bolama, 6201-001, Covilhã, Portugal

^* Corresponding author: ampires@sapo.pt

Abstract

Throughout the history of Western culture, landscape has been transformed according to the search for the representation of an image of paradise, and it has acquired and absorbed principles dictated by the mental, cultural, social and political framework in which it is involved. Suburban villas are contextualized interpretations of ways of using and occupying the landscape, organized and built by cultural and economic elites, creating places where landscape and architecture complement each other in a hasty manner. The research focused on the suburban Villa of Renaissance influence as a reference and on framing and contextualizing it in the historiography and culture of Architecture and Landscape in Portuguese historical areas. The evolution of the concepts of suburban Villa, garden, villegiattura and ideal Villa was addressed. The research was conducted on the relationship between the mind, the rational, and the emotions of those who inhabit/perceive space and those who design it. From the demonstration of the adequacy of the same structuring, compositional and programmatic principles resulting from a cultural and historical evolution to new times and regional cultures, and their framing in times of artistic and Cultural Revolution, the same conceptual principles, spatial orders and types of relationship with the landscape were adapted to avant-garde compositional grammars in other architectural types and urban structures. This study proves the existence of an important contribution to Modern and Contemporary Architecture and Landscape Architecture, of an architectural culture synthesized in the analysis of the cases treated. A contribution also to teaching and professional practice, from the identification of recent works that reveal the same principles, spatial orders, approach to place and relationship with the landscape.