Gaps in the Perception of the Visual Urban Environment

Abstract

This article deals with the topic of the perception of urban environment through the exploration and register of some temporary visual elements that appear in the city. With the support of theoretical considerations and photographic images of the author’s production, it is obvious the existence of a parallel city that coexists with the one usually perceived. Based on the definitions of urban morphology and iconography, the author introduces the structure of cities through sensory and perceptual registers, and how it becomes an imaginatively constructed form. The article emphasizes in an instance of authenticity for cities that goes beyond, from the purely physical and formal, to the recognition of the intangible and phenomenological as elements in the urban landscape.