follow-up
Digital
Smartphone App
This free smartphone app will make it easy to find landmarks and their location. It will be made public listing c. 20 mathematical games carved in pavements or stone and various pavements’ geometrical symmetries. It will give travel directions to any of them. Besides, it will provide images and in-depth information about the attractions sough. Users can submit their own proposals of landmarks to be included upon approval. Conceived by Jorge Nuno Silva, it has been developed by an informatics student. It is expected to be ready by mid-2020.
Historical urban cartography
Based on the identification of sites (institutions, neighbourhoods, gardens, techno-scientific objects, etc) in the context of the VISLIS project, digital humanities’ techniques were used for constructing a research tool that can also be used as an outreach output, mapping STM sites in Lisbon and placing them in time.
The mapping being carried out formalizes the survey of all formal and informal STM spaces and sites which existed in Lisbon/were the object of study of VISLIS, from 1830s to 1940, allowing for a fine analysis of their relations and their connection with the reorganization and expansion of the city. Online visitors will be able to filter STM placemarkers by type or by year, or see them in context, using overlaid high-resolution geo-referenced cartography. The tool was built using the free tools QGIS, Google Sheets and Mapbox, and was conceived and implemented by João Machado with the help of José Avelãs Nunes. It will be made public by mid-2020. link
Books and edited volumes
RODRIGUES, Ana Duarte, O triunfo da flor. Os passeios e arvoredos de Lisboa (1840-1900) (Lisboa: BNP, to be published in 2020).
SIMÕES, Ana; DIOGO, Maria Paula (eds.), Technoscientifc imaginaries in the making of Lisbon (1830s-1940) (Leiden: Brill, 2020-21). The edited volume will be published in the series Cultural Dynamics of Science, the volume’s proposal was accepted on 12 August 2019 by the series editors, mss to be submitted by March 2020).
Technoscientifc imaginaries in the making of Lisbon (1830s-1940) addresses the role of science, technology and medicine (STM) in the construction of Lisbon guided by three methodological axes – the perspective of invisibilities, urban connections, and technoscientific imaginaries. It is organized in three parts: 1. The fabric of the city; 2. Port city and imperial metropolis; and 3. Living in the city.
Avoiding the emphasis on well-known techno-scientific and medical institutions, the book focuses on the material make-up of Lisbon (from streets and pavements to tree-lined plantations and a costal road), on less-well known institutions and spaces (including the customs’ laboratory, the colonial agricultural museum, workers’ housing, gardens and Luna parks), to actors (including non-human ones, such as dogs and germs), and ephemeral spaces (including exhibitions or parks). It further discusses how visionary/utopian proposals were shaped by contemporary norms and values, and informed the making of Lisbon while they were assessed vis-à-vis other urban landscapes, real or imagined.