part 1 - Iccrom

MEASURING HERITAGE CONSERVATION PERFORMANCE
6th International Seminar on Urban Conservation
to the outside and changing between the wide-open
and hot feira livre and the shady hall intense impressions
in all dimensions of perception are made. A
butcher said that this fluid flow of customers is (one
of) the essence(s) of this feira. We realize that these
‘spatial actions’ are one of the affecting conditions of
Laranjeira’s market.
The spatial score (or script) has become its colours,
smells, sounds; its time, rhythm and the sequence of
movements. If we want to express formation rules
we may say that there is a main underlying structure
that is pictured by the market’s vivid reality (or
using a musical vocabulary: there is an always new
improvisation like in jazz music; always new and
different renditions of the same underlying theme
or phrase). With its well-proportioned dimensions
the width of a path allows narrowing it until a certain
density is reached that creates a swarm of people
and things. People move in a slower, sometimes
pressed velocity and density changes to accommodate
the situation, attractions and locality. In this
traditional space the ‘communication’ or interaction
between people and objects become a flowing line
and network like the tune of a well-structured and
formed musical composition.
5. Understanding
Practicing this kind of writing in the descriptive
report is transferring and imparting both observed
facts and perceived impressions, founded on a
detailed methodology and local examination.
For the field research we defined 5 typical places
(each sector ca. 10 x 10m) at defined pre-observed
localities (with different products and spatial structure)
and documented all equipment and details
(‘hardware’), this is shown in Figure 6. Secondly,
at defined moments (‘time-cuts’) we mapped all
people in these sectors and their activities. Thirdly,
we conducted short interviews with these customers
within the same time period. Additionally
in the same 5 sectors the sellers were interviewed
as well as some professionals from the market
organization, some jobbing workers, etc. Alongside
other research, these interviews made it possible
to get information about motifs, origins, products,
customs, business background, periods of visits,
organization details, etc. The knowledge of usage
and its conditions explicate a typical scenario like
a script, or formation rules (‘software’). The limited
possibilities of this paper (and of the INRC-project)
do not allow for discussion and practice of more
sociological, psychological, behavioural, urban and
architectonic methods that have been developed by
scientists from the first environmental approaches
of the humanities. Meanwhile there exist a wide
range of methods and techniques that deepen and
enhance socio-spatial approaches and their possible
results in order to understand complex real
situations at different levels and from different
perspectives. We see a lot of methods and concepts
such as Roger Barker’s ‘behavioral setting’, Kurt
Lewin’s psychologischer Lebensraum [‘psychological
Figure 6. The five sectors of local survey and the workflow diagram.
Brendle, K. H. 2012. ¿Conservar uma feira livre? Or, preserving dynamic, complex heritage by accenting societal character and sociospatial
conceptualization. In Zancheti, S. M. & K. Similä, eds. Measuring heritage conservation performance, pp. 42-52. Rome, ICCROM.
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