Saturday, April 6, 2013

0172 – Linear versus sinuous


This is the north part of the enclosure of Salvada. As is clearly seen, there is a linear outside ditch and a sinuous one by the inside, with a quite regular lobular pattern (like in Xancra, Santa Vitória or Outeiro Alto 2).

How to interpret this design? The sinuous well patterned ditch implies a multiplication (more than the double) of the effort to open the ditch. And what functional purpose can we detect in that design and effort? Certainly, those that once have seen bastions in these semicircular shapes will not suggest that we have a sequence of bastions side by side, not being able to have the function of a bastion. It would be an absurd proposition, as it would be to talk about water canals.

No, this design has to be explain by the ideological dimension of Architecture and sociology of space and to approach that we have to be well supplied of social theory (of sociological, psychological, anthropological and philosophical origin), or we only be able, with the linear minds of the “axiomatic obvious”, to tell linear old stories perpetuated by lineages of members of the “definite discourse”.

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