MARGINALIA VEGETAL: Notes on a Wasteland at the Edge of the Railway
Chapter featured in the book Unquiet Vegetation – Unlikely Records Between Landscape, Art, Architecture and Ruin, edited by Miguel Costa (CEAA-ESAP) and issued by the Arnaldo Araújo Research Centre, Escola Superior Artística do Porto, 2024
Abstract: In this text, I present a series of observations activated through field research conducted between January and June 2024 in an urban wasteland located in the Rego neighborhood of Lisbon. The work is grounded in field notes written during the research process, which also gave rise to the audio walk Marginalia Vegetal, presented in June 2024. The walk unfolded across the broader Santos to Rego area, including the aforementioned wasteland. The term marginalia refers to the notes scribbled by readers in the margins of a book’s pages. Through annotations and drawings, a parallel text emerges — one that is in close dialogue with the original. The walk was guided by a set of observations made at the margins of the places visited. It followed the thread of vegetal presence in the city — its various modes of existence and cultivation, as well as the stories that sprout between people and plants. The field notes focused on an embodied observation of space and of how it is used by local residents. I paid particular attention to an urban garden located on private land temporarily made available for collective use by a group of neighbors. Based on this experience, I speculate on the presence of wastelands — or baldios — in urban contexts, and on possible alternative uses while these sites remain in a state of suspension. The text examines the tensions surrounding the term baldio, its multiple meanings, and its possible interpretations within the urban fabric. Finally, I highlight the ruderal ecosystems and informal appropriations that emerge in urban wastelands, despite their apparent disorder or supposed inactivity. Understood here as spaces of unlearning, these terrains challenge conventional notions of landscape, of what is natural or artificial, urban or rural — and invite us to consider other models of inhabiting time and space in the city. [Flora Paim]
Keywords: baldio, ruderal, rubble, community urban garden, fieldwork.
DOI: -
