An analytical method of dispersed architecture aproach. Study area: Region Cogollos Vega, Granada

Abstract

The need for understanding the architectural elements of the environment of the
river Río Blanco in Cogollos Vega in the north of Granada as a territorial and cultural
landscape underlies in its memories and symbolic value, determined by «places with
identity» with a significant role in a global context. These places are worthy of preservation
for their artistic, historical, ethnographic and scenic values. In this region, as in some others,
the notion of heritage must be understood in a holistic way; in a quantitative way, expanding
its conception, and therefore its protection, to the built environment, cultural landscapes
and roads; in a qualitative way, as a tangible and intangible expression of people, as the
«cultural skeleton of the territory». The value assessment of the territory requires analysing
the existing resources from a new perspective and knowing the socio-territorial problems
towards their exploitation. This forces to take a new reading and make an integrated analysis
of the territory through the different types of cultural, environmental, scenic, and
ethnological-anthropological resources and through heritage assessment, in order to define
the relationship of the building and the landscape it is inserted in with features such as
surprise, adaptability, limits, appearance, labyrinthine route, space framework, innovation
and potential, and allowing the evaluation of the use possibilities. Culture plays an important
role and must be linked to a new way of looking and reading, as well as analysing and
diagnosing the territory in order to overcome the simple preservation-recovery of heritage
by its productive reprocessing. The widespread abandonment of popular architecture in this
area, as the country houses in Tejera, Moralejo, Asperones, Dehesilla, La Taula and El Canal,
is understandable taking into account the breaking of the territorial linkages. Therefore, the
development of a biography of unknown architectures, with a greater historical weight, will
allow to assemble and provide the backbone of the heritage in its territorial dimension, as
well as propose preservation solutions and create future multi-active proposals related to
the cultural landscape.