[en] The purpose of this essay is to develop a process of reflexion and investigation, organised, linked on time and sometimes speculative and at the same time to contribute for a further insight of the urbanistic issue as an object – the city – being a determinative and essential part of the spatial system of deepest complexity. Therefore the city viewed "as a laboratory of Architecture, as a model to the natural scale, which means making an effort of distance and rationalization in relation to a phenomenon as complex and passionate as the urban phenomenon, we are able to identify specific situations, themes, problems that can be individualised as an object of study". The city – Matosinhos: object of study of this work of investigation, is understood as an architecture. This archirtecture is not only the visible image of the city and in the whole of its architectures but the architecture as construction of the city on time. The shape of the city is always the shape of a time of the city and there are several times in the shape of the city that we intend to investigate. The construction of the city, of a part of the city "joins throughout the time several tasks on the ground and building and the complexity of its result is not just the repetition of the types or the juxtaposition of the tissues but it expresses the process of linking in which the forms and constructive moments succeed with their proper rhythms". In this work the studying of this attitude in what concerns the city consists also in the possibility of identifying definite models of city in the built city besides we recognise that the city is the result of superposition or juxtaposition of urban models. This study engages itself on identifying the processes of urban change in a area of study of the city that we pretend to elaborate on "the level of its essence and not only on the level of its appearance" getting an opportunity to interfere in a future, restoring a determined identity of a qualified urban space without meaning, a return to the traditional models. We point out the importance that the tools of the typology and morphology acquire in the urban analysis, showing also how the concerns of the urbanistic and architecture in the research and intervention over the contemporaneous city are approached among them. The most important is to settle that the urban analysis "informs" the urbanistic and architectural proposals, sinking the research over the urban specifications of each one of the parts from the contemporaneous city.

[gl] O obxectivo deste ensaio consiste en desenvolver un proceso de reflexión e investigación, organizado, vinculado no tempo e en ocasións especulativo, e en contribuír asemade a comprender mellor a cuestión urbanística como un obxecto —a cidade— que representa unha parte determinante e fundamental do sistema espacial, da maior complexidade. A cidade obxecto de estudo deste traballo de investigación, Matosinhos, enténdese como unha arquitectura. Esta arquitectura non só é a imaxe visíbel da cidade e se reflicte na totalidade das súas arquitecturas, senón que se contempla como unha construción da cidade no tempo. A forma da cidade sempre é a forma dun tempo da cidade, e hai varios tempos na forma da cidade que pretendemos investigar. Salientamos a importancia que adquiren os instrumentos da tipoloxía e a morfoloxía na análise urbana, amosando tamén como se enfocan, entre eles, as preocupacións do urbanismo e a arquitectura na investigación e a intervención na cidade contemporánea. O máis importante é concluír que a análise urbana "informa" as propostas urbanísticas e arquitectónicas, afondando na investigación sobre as especificacións urbanas de cada unha das partes da cidade contemporánea