Entre a imensidão virtual : sobre o espaço e as suas diversas potencialidades

Abstract

This dissertation has the study of human space along the components that virtually structure it as its main goal. Its development splits between exploring the spatial idea at the root of civilizational growth and considering a range of categorizations beyond those that express its best condition, which have been informing it as part of visual culture. Within it, there’s an initial approach towards the symbols, organizations, and practices building linked throughout antiquity. Analyses of civilizational artifacts from the Ancient Age and Hellenic texts merge with Plato’s reflection in The Republic, being then followed by readings of classical references on proportion under the aesthetic virtue of the drafted building this literature implies. Through this, the arts’ theoretical scope comes into play and begins being studied together with notions informed by spatial conditioning, whilst the scenarios Plato hypothesizes in The Republic give place to his Atlantis, More's Utopia and Younge's Dystopia. The investigational sequence upon which these three scenarios are inserted introduces the conventional aspects of amoenitas, inamoenitas, concinnitas and inconcinnitas in view of the academic progression of fields where landscape and plan have their creative centres. Attending these by-products of Drawing, an exploration is conducted about the route European landscape’s visuality has taken in its modern evolution, and an aesthetic reflection is obtained. Said reflection is subsequent to the connection between pictorial work's imaginaries and architectural inventories, which directs the thematic focus towards the environmental side of spatial condition, and proposes Lisbon as the main subject for the remaining topics. Then, the exhibition of investigative materials surrounding Praça do Comércio and pre-conclusive balances come up through a retrospective spanning from the 16th to the 18th century and its posteriorities.