A country’s cultural landscapes are an important part of its heritage. The growing need to identify, catalogue and preserve these resources has led to a rapid change in the management and inventorying of heritage in general and of cultural landscapes in particular. The main aim of this work is to develop and apply an updated and integrated methodology for capturing and processing geo-information for the digital documentation of cultural heritage. The proposed case study is the atomic garden in the Finca El Encín (Madrid), a singular space with unique biogeographical features created over 60 years ago. The results of the case study validate the method, consisting of an unmanned aerial platform equipped with sensors to obtain point clouds and aerial images in conjunction with point clouds and images captured with a terrestrial laser scanner.

Inspired by the European Landscape Convention, landscape conservation policies in European countries are increasingly becoming connected to cultural heritage policies. In some European countries such as Spain, the vision of the ELC has been enriched with that of the guidelines on the inclusion of Cultural Landscapes on the World Heritage List. The Spanish National Cultural Landscape Plan, an instrument for the implementation of the ELC promoted by the Spanish Institute of Cultural Heritage, expressly states that its definition of cultural landscape should be based on the definition of the UNESCO World Heritage Convention, but incorporating the ELC. However, this confluence is ultimately reflected in confronting guidelines. This study deepens this duality of the concept of cultural landscape, explores its conflicting spatial implications, and discusses its use in Spanish regional instruments. Through the statistical study of a sample of Spanish cultural landscapes, our study recognizes the need for guidelines for the identification of landscapes of special interest, especially if they are to be converted into cultural properties afterwards. Although the study cannot provide a method that solves the problem of the spatial dimensions of the landscape without major concessions, it has provided a classification of the dominant typology.

Landscape conservation efforts in many European countries focus on cultural landscapes, which are part of the cultural identity of people, have a great heritage significance, improve the living standards of local populations and provide valuable cultural biodiversity. However, despite a wide arrange of protective measures, the management of preserved areas is seldom effective for the protection of cultural landscapes. Through a multi-approach analysis, we characterise the main heritage attributes of 17 Protected Landscapes in Spain and assess their management effectiveness by quantifying the evolution of the spatial pattern inside and outside protected landscapes. Our method has proven useful to quantitatively describe the spatial-temporal patterns of change of the protected and unprotected landscapes studied. We highlight the following results: (i) the concepts of uniqueness and naturalness are not appropriate to preserve cultural landscapes; (ii) the land protection approach currently adopted is not useful for the protection of cultural landscapes, particularly of the most rural ones; (iii) the landscapes studied with greater rural features can be considered as “paper parks”. We recommend that different protection measures focused on the needs and desires of the rural population are taken into account in order to protect cultural landscapes that are shaped by traditional rural activities.

The teaching research project “HYBRID ACTIONS INTO THE LANDSCAPE: IN BETWEEN ART AND ARCHITECTURE” is integrated within the interdisciplinary research framework of the “Cultural Landscape Research Group”, GIPC, Based in the Superior Technical School of Architecture (Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura) of the Technical University of Madrid (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid). The AH project is an Experimental Workshop DPA-ETSAM at fourth year and operate as a training process for the regular’s students of Architecture, part of them Erasmus and international students, to obtain a sensibility within the contemporary landscape trough Actions on Art. From these premises, the teaching research project aims at revealing landscapes within the European framework of “Contemporary Cultural Landscape”. The present work synthesizes the research developed through the last courses, showing the evolution and the main targets of AH Lab, inside DPA and GIPC since 2006. JIDA2019 will focus into the open teaching process so we would like to share our researches and produce a critic discussion on it.

Photographic archives are a potential source of knowledge in industrial heritage. This paper deals with the case of the main mining sites developed in Francoist Spain to produce energy. Historic photographs are not only a description of the original forms, dispositions, and uses of an industrial complex, nor are they only a register of social implications of labor. They contribute to recognition of a more complex understanding of the heritage significance of obsoletes landscapes nowadays. This paper analyzes the photographic archives as an aesthetical footprint related to the narration of meanings, symbols, and identity. After World War II, Spain was politically and economically isolated. In 1944, the government established four main industrial complexes that would guarantee the national electricity and oil supply—three of them made use of large new mines of coal and oil sands. This paper assesses the evolution of the visual discourse in these three case studies. First, the paper explains the planning strategy and the construction process of these key places through primary sources from the National Institute of Industry. Although these images were not taken with an artistic intention, the photographers tried to bring to light some aesthetic qualities and give meanings to the technical phenomenon. Which concepts, categories, or aesthetic discourses did the most celebrated photographers use? These images are closely related to the "technological sublime" and allow us to study some variations in the emotional relationship of the individual with his surroundings. The second stage of this paper analyzes the multidirectional deviation of the visual discourse since the seventies. The photographers progressively identified the value of these landscapes of energy obsoletes at that time. Some artists represented the outdated landscape through romantic views, and some of them even disguised it with a natural cover. How is the transition from the "technological sublime" to the "technological ruin" produced? Are the cultural meanings voided by the heritagization process? Looking at the reminiscences that emerge nowadays when these landscapes are reactivated, we can hypothesize that meanings are always being reinvented.

El artículo profundiza en los territorios históricamente dedicados a la generación de la energía en España y más concretamente en el paisaje construido por los grandes complejos para la producción de electricidad e hidrocarburos que fueron promovidos por el sector público entre 1940 y 1965. Desarrolla una aproximación discursiva a través del análisis de fotografías y películas documentales disponibles en fondos de archivo de las empresas. Las imágenes estudiadas exponen el conflicto estético y cultural que supuso la llegada de los grandes artefactos de la energía a las áreas rurales y naturales. Ofrecen una alternativa a la percepción ordinaria, lo que obliga a lidiar mentalmente con su intensidad y poder. En consecuencia, permiten abordar el conflicto que introduce el paisaje industrial en general, y el de la energía en particular, en la relación afectiva de los individuos con su entorno circundante.