Abstract
In the academic context, especially in the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, and urbanism, urban form studies are assumed to be a vehicle for reflection on the built and unbuilt city. This essay aims to challenge the most common and stabilized morphological approaches in the city reading process, invoking vegetation and its role as an element of urban composition that is recurrently left out of it. Methodologically, this work uses the city of Lisbon to carry out a morphological characterization of different homogeneous areas based on a decomposition process of urban systems and elements. The article focuses on the reading of the public component of three homogeneous areas in Lisbon—Alfama, Avenidas and Alvalade—and specifically on the role of urban greenery as a systemic element of the formal or informal composition of the city. Through an initial systematization process reflects upon the formal attributes of vegetation and trees in particular, this research may contribute not only to the development of the discipline of urban morphology applied to the city of Lisbon but also to the acknowledgment of urban greenery as a contributor to the creation of specific, unique, and unrepeatable spaces within urban landscapes.
Highlights
This article aims to question the role of vegetation in the understanding and design process of the city through the morphological characterization of different homogeneous areas extracted from the urban fabric of the city of Lisbon
By taking vegetation as an element of urban morphology, this work challenges the most common morphological approaches to the city that invariably relies on stabilized and tested methodologies based on different schools of urban morphology such as the Italian, Anglo-Saxon, and French ones
In Lisbon, the tension between diversity and unity is evident due the existence of urban fabrics that has undergone long processes of sedimentation (Alfama), urban fabrics that result mainly from an idea of urban production based on the conception of public space (Avenidas), others designed as an integral unit (Alvalade), operations which reject the classic elements of urban composition such as the street and block (Olivais), or more recent urban fabrics representing the recovery of these elements in city urban composition (Parque das Nações)
Summary
This article aims to question the role of vegetation in the understanding and design process of the city through the morphological characterization of different homogeneous areas extracted from the urban fabric of the city of Lisbon. The approach to each urban segment is based on a morphological decomposition process of urban systems and elements. This enables the understanding of the complexity of each urban unit from the reading of its public and private components. By taking vegetation as an element of urban morphology, this work challenges the most common morphological approaches to the city that invariably relies on stabilized and tested methodologies based on different schools of urban morphology such as the Italian, Anglo-Saxon, and French ones
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