Re-thinking borders: the conflict between "generic" and "possible" space of infrastructure

Abstract

The proposed approach is to critically analyse an urban route in Portugal with an extensive, complex and fragmented matrix, between the “canonical” cities of Porto and Aveiro. The design of infrastructures on the stretch under analysis employs sectorial thinking that is frequently apathetic to the landscape and built-up contexts through which it passes. The relationship between the different infrastructural characteristics as well as their interaction with the contexts loses coherence and the city’s design. The intention is to present and represent the spatial expression of the conflict between the different systems’ design logic, and the manner in which each one of the systems integrates concepts such as the type of route, road profile, the front of built elements, pedestrian pavement, kerb, type of traffic, speed, use, degree of congestion, spacing, parking, among others. A further aim is to discover the moments in time when the thinking traditionally incorporated into the typical, quantitative matrix-based management of the territory was reinvented, when transversalities were established, when they were the subject of a multi-scaled examination and when the “complexification” of their symbolic and spatial meaning began, these being moments in time that represent the input of qualitative and sensorial criteria to the planning system. This shall be achieved through the detailed analysis of spatial structures where a meaning was produced through a matured design or a circumstantial, erudite or vernacular action. The register of these forms, qualities and spatiality will mark the need to use the design as a tool for interrogating the real and it will fuel the work of deconstructing the constructed reality thus allowing an elementary view of the themes corroborating the territory to be reached. The view that is achieved may not interpret oneiric images; its strength will reside in the materialisation of the arguments and strategies thus permitting the diffusion of the thinking to be incorporated by regulatory instruments. The aim is to contribute to the transformation of a law-based system into a prompting system.