The productive landscape. The textile industry in the consolidation of a territory and heritage. The case of Fábrica Sampaio Ferreira.

Filipa Alves

The current urban landscape of Vale do Ave is characterized by the ubiquitous presence of abandoned industrial spaces, which ones over time have become part of contemporary territory. The textile industry emerged as an element of transformation of the territory, having proved to be decisive in the construction and consolidation of a productive landscape, initially dominated by agricultural activity and later taken and adapted to the industrial phenomenon. However, in the face of urban development and socio-economic changes, many of the industrial spaces are now in a state of ruin,that proves a stagnant territory left to deindustrialization.

In this context, the main objective of this research is to approach the abandonment of industrial ruins, understanding its past and heritage as characteristics that contributed to the construction and transformation of a productive landscape, as a way of suggest new possibilities and opportunities for these spaces, that try to protect them from decontextualized actions and solve present problems in urban networks. Therefore, in a first moment, this research tries to understand the impact that the textile industry has had on the landscape of Vale do Ave, transforming it according to industrial needs and progress, with the aim of later relocate the study at the Fábrica Sampaio Ferreira as a transversal space to the entire industrialization process and history and unique past, with the purpose of after elaborate interventions proposals that seek to involve the ruin and the landscape.