The Landscape in the Gradient: ReEnvisioning the In-between

Abstract

The thesis explores design methods to integrate social-ecological and morphological relationships of the
peri-urban areas into one network by using existing altered systems on site. The course of the research is mainly focused on the questionable relation of these in-between landscapes with the urban and rural realm and their future perception considering the case of the Lisbon Metropolitan Area as the main context.
The main context is being analyzed through a series of scales to identify the relationships that contribute or not in the creation of the network. Furthermore the design framework considers research by design tools such as the use of exploratory mapping, mental mapping , cross reference mapping, narrative mapping, images and
interviews.
The design process is inspired by a series of design principles related to Landscape ecological approaches and Landscape urbanism theories enhanced also by the utopian visions of both fields such as the works of Frank Lloyd Wright ( The Broadacre City ) and Geoffrey Jellicoe (Motopia).
The project starts with the multi-scalar analysis of the three peri-urban areas of the Lisbon metropolis by identifying
the networks that occur and connects them as being part of a larger system. A continuous explorative process that tries to understand the relationships between the urban and rural and the reason of social and
ecological detachment within the peri-urban areas and the core of the city of Lisbon.
A historical analysis is also used as a main perspective in order to understand the complexity of the context as well the administrative perspective in order to to reflect on the diagnosis.The fact that we perceive these areas as two distinctive landscapes pushes forward the aim of this research, which is to develop design principles that can re-envision these in-between landscapes of the metropolitan region of Lisbon as a network of social ecological and morphological relations. The creation of a hybrid landscape where these processes interact with each other and behave as one network , that characterizes the continuum .
The final design project highlights 3 areas of exploration, where the new image of the territory is unveiled .
Going from the rural to urban the gradient is reshaped. The new cultivated landscape reveals the pottentials of the network’s main elements aiming not only to re-attach social and ecologiclal processes, but also to contribute to the sensorial exploration of the visitors and residents. The new landscape promotes new uses derived from the actual pattern of the topos. Finally, reaching the core of the territory, the village of Malveira, the left over spaces are highlighted as dynamic tranzitional zones , that contibute to the ecological continuum, as well as to the creation of interchanging landscapes. The creation of meaningfull places out of neglected spaces.
Places that are prominent to changes , always in the process of becoming, reflecting the social and ecological
needs, promoting a new consideration of the dynamic flows, not as distinctive ones, but as a complexity that characterizes the new cultivated landscape.