On the Search for Transparency between Contemporary Design and the History of the Place

Abstract

The principal aim of this paper is to analyse the urban form, the buildings and the system of open spaces of a city in Spain, Morella, in the present, looking back to understand the meaning of things, and to show, using examples, that history, as context or precedent, over different periods of time, has always been a design tool. History allowed architects to find a balance between permanence and change in changing a place and offering users a ‘new’ place in which memories and hope can converge. To explain the transparency between architectural design and history, the city was analysed through drawings, historical paintings, ethnographic reports, and in current and ancient maps. The result is a longitudinal study of Morella that brings together: morphological configuration studies, the poetic act of design and, finally, the social use of space. The text shows how architects, as historians who read the built environment, and history, as a source material for architectural practice, make the dialogic relationship between contemporary design and the history of the place transparent.