ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the history of the landscape architecture research centre, currently Green and Blue Infrastructures Thematic Line (GBI-TL), acknowledging its contribution to Landscape Architecture research and education in Portugal.
GBI-TL is part of the LEAF research centre (Linking Landscape Environment Agriculture and Food), from the School of Agriculture (ISA), since 2013. It emerged from the Centro de Estudos de Arquitetura Paisagista “Prof. Caldeira Cabral” (CEAP-PFCC), founded in 2003. The CEAP-PFCC continued the research of the Landscape Architecture Autonomous Section (SAAP), created in 1993, and followed the goal of the first Centro de Estudos de Arquitectura Paisagista (CEAP), founded by Caldeira Cabral in 1953.
The methodological approach used in every project is the “landscape-system”, which is based on the concept of the continuum naturale. The Lisbon Municipal Plan allowed for a deeper analysis of this concept, which eventually led to the inclusion of the Ecological Network in the law in 1999.
In its 30 years, this team has worked at different scales, from national to regional, intermunicipal, municipal and local. These projects enrichened landscape planning courses and allowed the creation of EPIC WebGIS, an interactive spatial data infrastructure, while contributing to further development of landscape planning research and public service.
