This research starts from the understanding of the patrimonial landscape as a living and valuable palimpsest made up of different times and superimposed memories, able to grow as it receives the incorporation of new systems. The undisputed human fascination for progress and technical advances of each time is part of our culture, going back to the origins of landscape representation. However, the construction of a large volume of road infrastructure has highlighted the fragility of the landscape, so that the social negation of any type of intervention has become a contemporary phenomenon derived from the excesses committed throughout the last decades It is necessary to look for new strategies that truly coexist the presence of the roads within the patrimonial landscape. The great infrastructures of the past are part of our most valuable asset, so the new interventions have to aspire to have an aesthetic or even artistic interest that contributes to renew and expand the values of the heritage landscape
Faced with the American vision, centred on the relationship between infrastructures and the natural environment (Appleyard, Lynch, and Myer, 1964), in Europe the cultural idea of landscape governs, a continuous and solid process that follows its own course throughout of the history of the European landscape (Jellicoe, 1975). Few are the contributions of the consecrated authors of infrastructures in the 20th century in Spain, Fernández Casado defends the minimum alteration of the landscape as an axiom of his work, while Eduardo Torroja limits himself to affirming that infrastructures "must rhyme with him" (Fernández Ordoñez, 1990). The exception in our country is Miguel Aguiló, who since 1999 has studied in depth the idea of the place in relation to the engineering constructions themselves. Meanwhile, France has become a pioneer country since 1987, when a development plan was promoted led by the landscape architect Bernard Lassus, who relies on a deep commitment of management that is widely multidisciplinary, in charge of ensuring the correct integration of the roads in the landscape.
The architecture project and its tools are analysed as an essential means for a correct articulation between landscape and infrastructure, mainly in the environments of greatest heritage value. Architecture proves to be the necessary tool, guarantor of the construction of an infrastructure project that has to be subordinated to the conservation, protection, visibility, accessibility and legibility of the heritage landscapes in which it is inserted. In the first place, an extensive theoretical and project study has been carried out in which the architectural mechanisms of introduction of new infrastructures in the territory are applied to a set of case studies of great relevance and varied casuistry at European level, aspiring to be or already declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO: the tidal island of Mont Saint Michel in France; the landscape of Rapperswil, in the Lake of Zurich, Switzerland; the Viaduct of Millau, France; and the archaeological landscape of Stonehenge in England. Secondly, a deep study has been developed, more experimental and reinforced with new proposals, different coexistence strategies are verified that apply both to case studies worked within the Laboratory of Architectural, Patrimonial and Cultural Landscape, as well as to other cases of personal development. The study of nearby projects allows the verification of the theoretical discourse in situ, allowing experimentation at first hand with the strategies of architecture in the search for solutions of coexistence in the Heritage Landscape that are then checked in the actual reality, following its evolution and effectiveness over time.
The infrastructures are innovations loved by man, they offer new possibilities of development and prosperity to the territories, they represent the trip, the freedom, the unknown, the adventure, the life, etc. But the social benefit generated by its construction does not exempt from the responsibility of guaranteeing its coexistence through respectful attitudes with the landscape of man, because the most beautiful infrastructure must also be integrated within the compositional laws of the landscape in which it is inserted, especially in the case of a landscape of heritage value. All of them must be analysed to take advantage of the parameters that are proper to them and from which to extract later the most appropriate solutions. In short, only through the tools of the architectural project can coexistence be achieved in heritage landscapes in the presence of new infrastructures, developing projects based on continuous and specialized research, which will contribute to the knowledge reached by highly consolidated disciplines, as is the case of architecture, which today proves to be capable of applying its certainties to the new approaches, challenges and needs of a society, always in constant transformation.
APPLEYARD, Donald; LYNCH, Kevin, y MYER, John R., The view from the road(Cambridge: Joint Center for Urban Studies of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, 1964).
JELLICOE, Geoffrey y JELLICOE, Susan, The Landscape of Man: Shaping the Environment from Prehistory to the Present Day(Londres: Thames and Hudson Ltd, 1975).
FERNÁNDEZ ORDOÑEZ, José A., El pensamiento estético de los ingenieros, funcionalidad y belleza. Discurso del Académico electo leído en el acto de su recepción pública(Madrid: Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, 1990).