Session leader: Hugo Daniel da Silva Barreira

Title/General theme of the session: “Water, Architecture and Heritage”

Session Summary: The presence of water in cities is one of the recurring themes of urban history. Throughout many studies, water and the city have been seen as inseparable. Beyond its essential functions, the component of representation and power associated with water, materialized in fountains and circulation structures, has been highlighted in multiple approaches ranging from urban morphology to toponymy. In recent decades, with the indelible transformations in supply infrastructures, a new reality has emerged in the epistemological panorama: the supply circuits of the transition to contemporaneity. Reflections of the progress of yesteryear, their obsolescence today presents us with a series of new historical, artistic and heritage challenges. In this session, five researchers will present the results of their master’s and doctoral studies in the field of heritage studies from an international perspective and in broad diachrony. From the ancestral supply of the Acequia of the Alhambra in Granada, to the importance of water in treatises, focusing on the work of Cristóbal De Rojas, we move on to the problems of the transition to the modern supply systems that brought water to Penafiel between the 18th and 20th centuries. Between infrastructural collection and distribution systems and surface architectural materializations, the important heritage legacy associated with thermalism is also presented, with the example of Caldas das Taipas between the 19th and 20th centuries. Finally, and in a reflection on the very process of recognizing and valuing the cultural heritage of water and its problems, the Parque das Águas do Porto and its many elements are discussed. The various approaches are complemented by more theoretical, technical, formal, plastic or iconographic perspectives, sometimes focused on supply circuits, sometimes on the analysis of water architectures in their utilitarian and symbolic dimension, as representations of power or the experience of communities, crossing geographies, chronologies and bringing cross-cutting issues to the Portuguese case, such as the waterworks style or the recognition of the importance of Water Heritage on a global scale and the challenges inherent in its management.

Name of the speakers and their paper titles:

Thermal architecture in Caldas das Taipas (19th-20th centuries) | António José de Oliveira (PhD in Portuguese Art History. CITCEM researcher. Teacher at Agrupamento Escolas de Francisco de Holanda)

La Acequia Real y el suministro histórico de agua de la Alhambra de Granada | Daniel Jesús Quesada Morales (PhD in Art History from the University of Granada. Member of the research group Laboratorio de Arqueología y Arquitectura de la Ciudad (LAAC). Orcid: 0000-0003-4696-7236)

From Parque das Águas to the problems of the cultural heritage of water | Débora Guedes Silva (MA in Art History, Heritage and Visual Culture from FLUP)

Water architecture in Penafiel: methodologies and contributions to its study (18th-20th centuries) | Diogo Emanuel Pacheco Teixeira (PhD student in Heritage Studies at FLUP. Orcid: 0000-0003-0046-908X)

The intrinsic value of water in Sciencia de Architetura: Cristóbal De Rojas | Tara Trancón Pujol (PhD student in Heritage Studies at FLUP. Orcid: 0000-0001-5992-4193)

Moderators-commentators of the session:

Manuel Joaquim Moreira da Rocha

Ana Cardoso de Matos

Program

Free Entry!

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