The City as a Network of Stimulating Landscapes:

Considerations on the Composition of Open Spaces, their Outstanding Elements and Monuments.

Abstract

This article seeks to explore issues related to the structure of cities, from the understanding of the role of free spaces in the perception of its users and in the daily life. To accomplish this, the aspects related to functionality and the spatial configurations of free spaces are analyzed. The objective of the research is to explore issues already pointed out by authors and apply the theories raised in examples of traditional and new cities. The methodology consists of a bibliographic review of authors who dealt with the topological phenomenon itself, whose understandings point to the city as a system of interconnected free spaces, with its own hierarchies and meanings, and with certain recurrent spatial arrangements. These understandings resulted in a research to identify spatial arrangements, in squares with monuments and prominent elements, serving as examples to understanding and verifying the importance of these elements for the structuring of cities, their perception and relationship with their inhabitants. In conclusion, it is clear that seeing and organizing free spaces, especially from the Baroque period, is still recurrent in the planning of cities around the world, emphasizing monumentality with symbolic aspects and an idea of order and discipline in spatial arrangements.