Broken silence : a comparative approach to the integration processes of charterhouses in urban contexts

Abstract

This paper aims to set an approach to the integration of monasteries, from a formal and functional perspective, in the urban pattern of contemporary cities. For this purpose, Charterhouses have been selected as the case study, due to geographical –Carthusian order has spread worldwide–, morphological -Charterhouses own particular typological featuresand organisational –the conception of Carthusian life as a path of silence is diametrically opposed to current urban lifestyle– reasons. The research focuses on Charterhouses that, somehow, have become inserted into the urban fabric. Among these, two basic conditions have been detected: those which maintain their original use and those which have fallen into disuse or changed the original one. Regarding the first group, the main issue considered is concerned with the way their formal and practical interaction with urban environment has been developed. Within the second group cases, different situations have been detected after they were definitely abandoned by the Carthusian order, depending on several circumstances such as: the reason of this abandonment, particularly in the case of disentailments, their location with respect to the main urban settlements and communication routes, the growing dynamics of the mentioned settlements, the criteria and methodologies followed in the treatment of heritage in each case, etcetera. A comparative study of existing Charterhouses in different places of three different continents demonstrate, on the one hand, the power of pre-existent structures in urban fabric configuration, that often maintained shapes, orientations and spaces across the time and up to the present; and, on the other hand, how a structure originally conceived as typologically and spatially closed is able to become alive in situations –re-uses, appropriations, disintegrations, re-exploitations– radically different as they have to face different circumstances –geographical, historical, economical, cultural- and realities.