Historic hills from a configurational analysis perspective. Visibility and co-presence potentials in the hills of Vitória and Viana

Abstract

The objective of this article is to present results and discussions obtained from the development of a morphological study that aimed to identify potentials of visibility and co-presence in the historic hills of the municipalities of Vitória and Viana, both located in the Metropolitan Region of Greater Vitória (Espírito Santo, Brazil). These historical fabrics, nowadays and given the process of emptying uses of central areas, have not absorbed significant volumes of people on the streets and are (in common sense) criticized for being difficult to access. Is it possible to measure the potential for visibility and presence in these sites? To carry out this study, we opted, conceptually and methodologically, for the combined use of historical-geographical and configurational morphological approaches, thus contemplating quantitative and qualitative aspects of the tissues studied. The results obtained point to syntactic values ​​of integration from the studies of variables with the aid of the axial map and the visibility graphs. Among other similarities, it is observed that the roads around the religious buildings of Jesuit origin are the ones that present the highest probability of global, local and visual integration, endorsing the colonial strategies of spatial organization.

Keywords: historic hill, visibility graph (VGA), spatial syntax, urban morphology