A persistência das formas urbanas: construção de uma hipótese para a forma urbana da cidade de Coimbra até à Idade Média

Abstract

The city consists of a multiplicity of urban elements, created and subsequently reinterpreted at different times. These elements overlap each other in space and time, in continuity or rupture, creating a complex evolutionary process that determines the shape of the city, preserving through processes of urban sedimentation, the marks and the remains of past structures up to the present. Assuming the urban construction in long time as a continuous act of fabric production over pre-existing structures, it is thus possible to know the morphological evolution of the city by reading the various remains preserved in the urban fabric. Thus this paper aims to describe how, through a methodology that includes the articulation of different types of sources, it is possible to gradually reconstruct the morphological evolution of the city, realizing and demonstrating the value of pre-existing urban elements, through their continuous use in the production of the urban form, using as examples the Cardus Maximus and the Mosque of Coimbra.