Carrilho da Graça, arquitecto. photos: © Rita Burmester
The city of Abrantes is, materially and historically, a sign in a wide territory, the expression of a geostrategic opportunity on a fortuitous promontory in the geometrical center of a territory, that territory, defined by political conventions and, simultaneously, on the transition between two landscape units with different morphologies – the rugged orography of the Beiras and the plains of the “Borda d’Água” meadowlands. Vigilant over the landscapes from which it raises, Abrantes was built simultaneously as a spyglass and as a lighthouse, a fortified trading post and a mandatory passageway, in times of peace and of war: over a topos, telluric and matricial, the human settlement built the opportunity of inhabiting its locus1, each bound to the other in a systemic and inextricable way. Continue reading Carrilho da Graça
