[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.

[es] El objetivo de esta tesis consiste en desarrollar un proceso de reflexión e investigación, organizado, vinculado en el tiempo y en ocasiones especulativo, y en contribuir a la vez a comprender mejor la cuestión urbanística como un objeto —la ciudad— que representa una parte determinante y fundamental del sistema espacial del territorio, de la mayor complejidad. La ciudad objeto de estudio en este trabajo de investigación, Matosinhos, se entiende como una arquitectura de gran escala. Esta arquitectura no solo es la imagen visible de la ciudad que se refleja en la totalidad de sus arquitecturas propiamente dichas, sino que se contempla también como una construcción de la ciudad en el tiempo. La forma de la ciudad siempre es la forma de un tiempo de la ciudad, y hay varios tiempos en la forma de la ciudad que pretendemos investigar. Resaltamos la importancia que adquieren los instrumentos de la tipología y la morfología en el análisis urbano, mostrando también cómo se enfocan, el urbanismo y la arquitectura en la investigación y la intervención en la ciudad contemporánea. También es importante concluir que el análisis urbano "explica" las propuestas urbanísticas y arquitectónicas, profundizando en la investigación sobre las características urbanas de cada una de las partes de la ciudad contemporánea