Landscape and heritage
1964. Modernism in architecture was beginning to be criticized by the younger architects. However, the belief in modernity remained alive. The architect Bernard Rudofsky was preparing an exhibition at the New York’s MoMA. Architecture without Architects changed perceptions about “vernacular” architecture, or at least drew attention to it. “Architectural history, as written and taught in the Western world, has never been concerned with more than a few select cultures”. These cultures were, of course, Europeans, and also, those that gave origin to Europe, that is, those of the Near and Middle East.
Besides, Rudofsky pointed out how the West had been especially interested in the architecture of the rich: palaces, cathedrals, government buildings. For Rudofsky, however,
“There is much to learn from the architecture before it became an expert’s art. The untutored builders in space and time demonstrate an admirable talent for fitting their buildings into the natural surroundings. Instead of trying to «conquer nature», as we do, they welcome the vagaries of climate agents and the challenge of topography”.
This statement by the Czech architect immediately takes us to the Galician Castros, whose conservation and musealization project develops AGi architects in the area of Pontevedra, in Galicia. These Iron Age fortified villages were adapted to landscape, and to its climatic and geographical conditions. Their shapes remind us of many of the images that Rudofsky presented in the exhibition.
Castro de Monte de Santa Tegra. Image by Henrique Pereira, via Wikipedia Commons.
The Castro culture developed in the northwestern area of the Iberian Peninsula during the Iron Age. It was the result of sedentarization process of the inhabitants of the area. They occupied all the natural region, that went from the north of Portugal, to the Galicia, Asturias and Leon. It had an indigenous origin, perhaps with Celtic influences. Some authors point out that the Irish Celtic tribes came from Galician fishermen.
The forts used to be located in characteristic places in the landscape. Hills, maritime peninsulas or spurs, hillsides. In those places, nature provided good defensive facilities. At the same time, this spots visually dominated the territory and were close to the cultivated lands.
The fort was surrounded by walls and other defensive systems. The villages did not seemed to have a real need for defense, since the distance between different settlements made unnecessary competition for farmland.
Exterior walls made the Galician Castros a visible element in the landscape. A mark in the territory, a symbol of status and also, of distinction. A sign.
As in the Italian trulli, the Castro houses had a circular shape. They were located together, separated by narrow streets, forming organic structures. They were independent cells, opening to common spaces or patios, sometimes closed by a wall with a single entrance. These groups of cells formed family units, which could include ovens or warehouses. Houses had only one room and were built in adobe, in some cases, and in others, in stone masonry. Probably, they were finished in mortar, and painted, inside and outside. Remains of white, red and blue paint have been documented. Some authors explain the circular form as a transfer from the nomadic architecture to a stable construction. The circular house could also be a consequence of the ignorance of corner rigging. With the Roman invasion, some hillforts adopted the rectangular typology.
It was a stateless society. The communities were united by ties of kinship, they helped each other, and they could not marry. These communities were organized into superior units, which had a political leader. Several of the higher groups formed a populus, an association that created a shared territory in which one settlement was signified as a meeting place. Some texts say that this was a matrilineal culture, in which women owned the land. But a patriarchal society where men were part of a warrior aristocracy.
Family nucleus of Cividade de Terroso, in the book “Subtus Montis Terroso – Archaeological Patrimony not Concelho da Póvoa de Varzim Câmara Municipal da Póvoa de Varzim”. Via Wikipedia Commons
Stone was undoubtedly a fundamental element in these architectures. It shaped most utilitarian elements: houses, walls, military defenses, but also incorporated the mystical decoration and symbolism.
In some Castros we find petroglyphs. This is the case of the drawings of serpes, beings with the shape of a serpent with wings. In Galician mythology, it is said that they guard treasures. These drawings are present in the Castros of Baldoeiro, in Portugal, Tegra, Penalba and Troña, in Pontevedra.
Petroglyph. Pedra da Serpe. Castro da Troña. Image by José Antonio Gil Mar, via Wikipedia Commons
Is there something of the Galician Castros in today’s architecture? Perhaps. The most obvious connection is the one with the palloza, a circular or oval house with thatched roof. Pallozas have pre-Roman origin, and survived until the mid-twentieth century, when much of the population emigrated to the major Spanish cities. Some continue to be used today, adapted for today’s activities: a bar, an ethnographic museum.
The circular house was typical of the Bronze Age also in the British Isles. Other vernacular variants of the circular house can be found in other places, such as the trulli mentioned by Rudofsky. In Africa we can see circular houses in several sub-Saharan countries, from Mauritania to South Africa.
The modern and postmodern architects of the 20th century recovered this form also for their projects. The idea of home as a capsule, for example, emerged strongly in the architectural utopias and the radical design of the 70s.
Also, during Modernism, the plasticity of concrete was celebrated with curved walls. In Spain, there is a very picturesque example, the Ciudad Sindical de Vacaciones Tiempo Libre. It was built during the Franco regime in Marbella as a subsidized holiday complex for working class families. The group of 199 houses was designed by the architects Manuel Aymerich and Ángel Cadarso at the end of the 50s.
The houses of Aymerich and Cadarso are minimum units. They yield half of the surface to the outside. In the interior, the basic functions of living are reduced to the sleeping area, hygiene facilities, and a minimum kitchen. The house is a holiday one, adapted to a climate, benign and sunny. The house provides a kind of lifestyle that is enjoyed either in the privacy of the patio, or in the collective facilities of the Holiday Complex. Something that could also happen in the Castros, although this time, the spirit responds to other time and place, the one of a paternalistic organization of free time.
Castro de Baroña. Image by Luis Miguel Bugallo Sánchez via Wikipedia Commons.
But not only formal questions that can be learned from the Galician Castros. It is perhaps their integration with the premodern environment what provides us with a more important teaching at this time of ecological crisis. The Castro house favored a integration of humans in the landscape. The project of AGi architects for the conservation and musealization of the Castros of Pontevedra proposes an ecological continuity with the surroundings. It puts attention to landscape and to patrimonial value. It reads Galician architectural heritage as a constellation of buildings scattered throughout the territory integrated in a natural system of native species.
The Galician writer Castelao suggested, “a raza dos castros, anterior â provincia romana, cobreu a nosa terra, e, como decía Otero Pedraio, «n-un entrar da paisaxe no home e do home no paisaxe, creouse a vida eterna de Galiza».” *
A model that perhaps becomes increasingly interesting in a world in which cities are becoming unaffordable, and the contact with the natural, more necessary.
* In English: “the race of the Castros, before the Roman province, covered our land and, as Otero Pedraio said,«in entering the landscape in men and men in the landscape, the eternal life of Galicia was born»”.
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