Conduit, patio, waste: mapping environmental relations in Bairro da Malagueira

From Bairro da Malagueira, this thesis proposes a method for mapping environmental relations in architecture. It does so by identifying a series of thresholds, namely the conduit, the patio, and the waste, understood as structures that convert space into bounded associations, mediating between inside and outside, foreground and background, architecture and nature. Each threshold acts as a time-space frame with a specific magnitude of approximation, and each internalizes sets of social relations, such as class, gender and race, with corresponding modes of environmental production, namely the hidden backgrounds of territory, domesticity, and wilderness. Bairro da Malagueira hence becomes a template through which this thesis explores a dialectical understanding of architecture as an agent of environmental history.