From the place shape to the design of the 'street', the 'door', the 'square'

Abstract

In the 1940s and 1950s the Portuguese Internal Colonization Board developed a set of settlements where it sought to develop design mechanisms that would allow not only to endow the sets with a sense of legibility as well as a strong territorial registration capacity (despite their small scale andthe scarcity of resources). The investigation uses graphic representation to explore the crossing of scales -from the design of the territory to the design of the house - to analyze the apparent diversity of the various colonies and identify the principle established in the implantation of the different settlements - dispersed or concentrated -. Integrating implantation devices that derive not only from reading the genesis of Portuguese settlements in their relationship with the topography and condition of the places, but also from the structure of European ancestral agricultural settlements, and the 'Garden Cities' and 'Beautiful City', a principle is established in which shapes are printed on the line of the territorial road, forming the street. An idea of ‘door’ and ‘square’ are also rescued as elements that become autonomous and establish relations at the scale of the large open space of the territory, introducing elements that can guarantee its legibility.