The next 13 and 14 May will take place the XII Seminar of the Network of Urban Form Studies (REFU), entitled “Interdiscipline in the study of urban form.” Organized by the International Architecture and Urban Planning Research Area of ​​the Department of Evaluation of Design in Time of the Division of Sciences and Arts for Design / CyAD. from the Autonomous Metropolitan University (UAM) of Mexico City.

In this edition, the academic community is invited to send proposals for papers on the relevance of cooperation and dialogue between disciplines for understanding the morphological processes of cities. Proposals in the form of abstracts must demonstrate interdisciplinary reflection; from the historical, cultural, institutional or socio-ecological perspective on the processes that participate or influence the morphogenesis of cities.

From Galicia, the architect and landscaper Manuel Ángel Bugallo Otero together with the art historian Cristina Villaverde Ruibal present a study on the evolution of the urban form of the traditional nucleus of Laxedo in the town hall of A Lama, Pontevedra. The work focuses special interest on the intervention developed in the first half of the 20th century promoted by D. Manuel Barreiro Cabanelas or Conde Cabanelas.

Laxedo, located at the foot of the Sierra del Cando, is not simply a geographical space with morphological and functional characteristics typical of this area of ​​the Galician mid-mountain rural area. We are facing a settlement made up of small nuclei that actually form a single and large polynuclear “village”.

To speak of Laxedo is to speak of the figure of Mr. Manuel Barreiro Cabanelas, an illustrious neighbor who emigrated to Brazil. His privileged social status and his large real estate businesses allowed him to be in direct contact with the urban reality of Rio de Janeiro for decades, drawing on the most modern intellectual and technical thinking of the time.

Cabanelas, through his knowledge, will apply in a period between 1900 to 1935, a series of urban planning principles of European and American influence present in the plans of the Rio de Janeiro city -Beaurepaire, Comissão de Melhoramentos, Pereira Passos and Agache- that will change forever his native Laxedo.

The rehabilitation and / or construction of houses, the opening of new streets, the channeling of springs, and the embellishment of the nucleus through sculpture with a great Masonic symbolic load are some of the features of this intervention.

The study carried out combines an understanding of the urban metabolism of the nucleus through its history and its social dynamics as the effect of emigration. The balance between traditional rural dynamics, emigration, vernacular architecture, urban influence and the Masonic symbolism of sculpture linked to the urban layout give meaning to the place.