The territory, as it was understood in the medieval period, undergoes a shift of paradigm in the early stages of the modern age. The growing importance of European capitals and city-states, as an expression of the court life of absolutist monarchies, and the advent of the Counter-Reform movement provide urban spaces with diverse moments and events, where architecture plays a decisive role in the assertion of different powers -notably within royal and religious elites. In the early 18th century, the highest power belonged to King João V, who wanted to transform Lisbon into the new "Rome of the Occident" in an effort to seek validation from the religious establishment of Rome. For that purpose, Filippo Juvarra was one of the talented architects brought to Portugal to apply the monarch's ideas. One of the least studied projects is the one signed by Carlos Mardel, which intended to significantly change the image of the city throughout several miles of its riverfront. By employing scenographic strategies from the Baroque period, the proposed plan reveals a very smart hydraulic technique which allows for the blending of the water and the "new city," forming a harmonious combination. The Portuguese model shows that the need to assert Lisbon as the capital of an overseas empire triggers changes in the architecture and the urban scenography, in order to feed new desires and ambitions. Taking into account that the most widespread images of Lisbon are its views from the river, the proposals for the regularization of the riverfront are now seen as an innovative and strategic motivation to recreate the city's image. As heirs of a strong tradition, based on a constructive praxis, engineers, architects, and construction masters develop innovative projects in response to new challenges, which will have considerable relevance in the international context.
Vitrúvio establishes at DeArchitectura the principles of design and port construction to serve the city in nautical, commercial, warlike and architectural terms. Alberti retakes the concept and extends it. As far as we know, Lisbon never possessed, during classical antiquity, a port worthy of that name, as Vitruvius described. The justification for the absence of a port´s structures can be due an exceptional characteristic as the natural anchorage-ships are protected in Tagus even in stormy days, away from the sea. Here only the tides have effect, by the minor winds and curling/ripples, not obliging thus to the design/construction of the port as it happens in other maritime cities. The Tagus is a pleasant cove-"Olisipo", interior sea. Francisco de Hollanda planned the city in accordance to the river, assuming it as an essential raw material of the locus. The image of the city is strongly linked to the aquatic environment. Tagus's importance to the city is reinforced by Frei Nicolau de Oliveira in the "Lisbon Book of Greatness"-a strategy relocating peninsula´s capital to Lisbon; citing the Emperor Charles V: "If I had been King of Lisbon, quickly I would be of the world". Following the words of King Charles V (I of Spain), King Philip II promoted works in view of Tagus' navigability, intending to link Madrid to the Atlantic. It was up to the architect Carlos Mardel, the delineation of the desires of the Portuguese monarch, King D. João V, to create the "Atlantic-Rome". The new plan, for the riverside front of Lisbon, redesigned the land-water frontier, suggesting a modern image and new port infrastructures. It was interrupted abruptly by the earthquake in November 1, 1755, and it erased, from the urban history of Lisbon what would be the largest pre-industrial plan for the city-one of the greatest for Europe at the time.
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