Abstract
Abstract. Manufacture and preindustrial activities have configured infrastructures and commercial development along several centuries. Both regional economic and social environment of the present days can be seen as a consequence of the secular interaction between available physical resources and social tissue along our history. Since ancient times, the economy of Castile and Leon has been based on livestock and agriculture, predominantly represented by cattle and large cereal extensions. Thus, flour industry plays an important role which has been reflected along the Medieval and Renaissance ages in a network of preindustrial installations involving mills and ”aceñas” (which are also water-powered mills but set up as larger plants containing different kinds of grinders). In this work we have performed an architectural surveying of a bunch of those large-scale abandoned installations which precede the development of the flour factories that brought the industrial era. Our case of use focuses on the aceñas placed in a strech of the Duero river, between Tordesillas and Toro (Spain). Our work includes the virtual reconstruction of mechanisms and a simulation of the processes that milling involves by using the transformation of hydrodynamical forces into mechanical power. Furthermore the architectural container, our development allows the visualization of the milling machinery running, enriched with a simulation of some aspect of the involved hydrodynamic aspects.
Highlights
From the late nineties of 20th century there is an increasing interest about Industrial Cultural Heritage (ICH, in the successive) which has been extended to Pre-Industrial and Technological Cultural Heritage (PITCH) involving Renaissance and beyond
In this work we introduce a methodology for surveying PITCH linked to flour mills along large rivers in a small zone of Castilla y Leon (Spanish region in the North plateau)
We have developed a case-of-use which is focused to explain the workflow of flour processes performed by large preindustrial installations, such as Acenas, which are built in stone with a typical shape given as a ship with a countercurrent prow; inside they contain are a large flour mill for grinding up the grain
Summary
From the late nineties of 20th century there is an increasing interest about Industrial Cultural Heritage (ICH, in the successive) which has been extended to Pre-Industrial and Technological Cultural Heritage (PITCH) involving Renaissance and beyond. We propose another view which is based in the interactive discovery of physical landscape, historical, social and technological issues which provide the keys to understand the surveyed buildings as a whole in a common and integrated framework With this approach we intend to explain how the pre-industrial and manufacture activities configure a local landscape, commercial routes and market activities which contribute to organize the socio-economic environment, besides architectural aspects of buildings and/or technological solutions. We intend to promote a rediscovery of pre-industrial activities in less developed regions as a cohesion factor in the past, which explains the old and almost disappeared network of relationships between near zones In this way and from a better knowledge and enjoy of these traditions, we intend to identify them as a way of articulating a richer social tissue, perform their reprojection towards the future and to reinforce the consciousness of citizenship as participant in a joint project, and not a simple spectator of very large scale initiatives. They have no relation with the promotion of a
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