An urban grammar for Portuguese colonial new towns in the 18th century.

Alexandra Paio and Benamy TurkieniczThis study describes the morphological urban order underlying Portuguese treatises and Portuguese urban cartographic representation produced from 16th century to 18th century. The historical documentation suggests that Pythagorean-Euclidian geometry appears to be a crucial ingredient for the understanding of Portuguese urban designthinking and urban design-making. To unveil the genesis of the morphological urban order present in the Portuguese colonial plans of the eighteenth century, a descriptive method, Shape Grammar has been adopted. Shape Grammar, as method, supports the analysis of the form-making logic and has proved to be powerful in shape analysis, description, interpretation, classification, evaluation and generation of a design language.
http://cumincades.scix.net/data/works/att/sigradi2009_1177.content.pdf