La arquitectura de un territorio productivolos molinos hidráulicos de la Sierra de Cádiz

Abstract

Productive rural architecture is an essential part of landscapes with heritage values and it helps to explain the historical functionality of the territories in which they are located. Despite their state of abandonment, they bear witness to and document the socio-economic and cultural structures of a region. The Sierra de Cádiz region (Andalusia, Spain) was chosen as the area of study. Its physical and cultural circumstances have favoured the survival of 85 water mills, which help to address the historical, logistical and landscape reading of the territory, because they have provided natural support by creating communication and hydraulic infrastructures. It is therefore a question of recognising and explaining the structure of this territory through its flour mills. It is interesting to get a reading of the territory based on these structures dispersed in the framework of our present time, detecting their links to modern and contemporary theories on architecture, infrastructure and landscape, and using current systems and techniques for mapping and modelling the territory. This allows us to construct new interpretations and elaborate new cartographic strata that make it possible to understand how architecture transforms territory into landscape, into places. Different scales of approach –General System, Local System and Architectural System– are presented from the specific research in Architectural Projects, giving rise to linked levels of knowledge that enable a comprehensive understanding of architecture, of its territory and of the dialogical and participative relationship that links them. Therefore, this work seeks to develop a methodology for a critical and contemporary reading of a resilient heritage landscape, full of anonymous architecture from the past. These traditional structures have been an object of interest since the early 20th century, historically structuring the territory and encompassing design values and strategies that can fill the architectural axiology with content. The structure of this Thesis consists of three parts. The first part, which addresses contextualisation, introduces the reader to the work, presenting the precedents and methodological tools to approach the research. It continues with a theoretical chapter that lays the foundations for contemporary reflection on the territory, landscape and productive rural architecture. The second part addresses the territory and the specific objects of study: The Sierra de Cádiz and its water mills. It begins by presenting the mountainous space, starting from the provincial framework and continuing with the region of the Sierra de Cádiz; from an objective and scientific perspective, it describes its geography, hydrography, land use, etc., followed by an analysis of its planning (urban and environmental) and its cultural heritage, and ends with a historical-cartographic study. The following chapter focuses on the architecture of the territory: the water mills. Their study is based on three methodological procedures: locating, drawing and inventorying them, actions that reaffirm their territorial and landscape condition. The last part, the conclusion, attempts to summarise the key aspects of the research; the final considerations on architecture and mills, which are built by means of pairs of related concepts, essential in the holistic reading undertaken: architecture and place, values and heritage, territory and landscape and infrastructures and networks. A brief epilogue closes this Doctoral Thesis