One Particular Fountain

Often I walk the streets of this ancient city to see new things, new places and new spaces.  I am serious about Lisboa being an ancient place.  According to the Wiki on the city Lisbon is one of the oldest cities in the world, and certainly the oldest in Western Europe. Lisboa predates other modern European capitals such as London, Paris and Rome by centuries. Julius Caesar made it a municipium called Felicitas Julia, adding to the name Olissipo.  The origins of the word Olissipo are murky; it may come from the Phoenician word for the Targus river. 

 One day I walked my neighborhood in a grid and came upon a new fountain. The font was tucked away in the shade of a courtyard next to a large four or five story building. In the middle of the fountain was a kiln.  A posting by the fountain says that the kiln, and maybe it is just an oven, was a remnant of an old brick factory that used to be located at that site.  

The fountain and the pool surrounding it are expansive and stretch for some distance, about half a city block.  Located in a shady place (something at a premium in Lisboa), the fountain is a bit of an urban oasis. Alongside the fountain are statuary of people, almost life sized. Near the edge of the fountain are tables and chairs hard fixed into the grounds.  Given the fountain is part of the Caixa Geral de Depositos complex (the largest financial institution in Portugal according to Wiki) my guess is that the tables and chairs are for people to enjoy breaks from the office, be it lunch or otherwise. This is just one of many squares with fountains in the city.  Interesting note the oldest still functioning fountain here dates from the 13^th century.

 There was a song, or maybe an album title, from Elvis Costello called All This Needless Beauty.  Instead of Needless the word might have been Useless.  This city is a center of needless beauty and nowhere is that more on display than in its fountain squares. Lisbon is filled with little courtyard spaces of fountains and trees. As often as not there is a small coffee shop or kiosk adjacent. 

In a hard-edged capitalistic world run according to the harsh principles of the free market, these places would not exist.  In America these spaces after debates had been held and commissions appointed would have been deemed irrelevant and redundant and sold on the sly, out of the public eye, on the cheap to a developer.  Up would pop a five-story building with “retail” on the ground floor. The retail would sit empty for years until a variance was given to turn the spaces into market priced rentals.

 

A good guess as to reasons why these spaces still exist in this corner of Iberia would bring two factors to the fore, i.e., weather and history.  Lisboa is for the majority of the year warm, lacking in in rain but often very humid. Back 85 years ago, back before the metro and wide ownership of automobiles, back before the wide adoption of air conditioning in commercial spaces, a day in an office, factory or walking to or from a job was a sweaty thing. Cooling oases were needed. Courtyards with trees and fountains were necessary. 

 

The Romans who one held this land knew the benefits of courtyards, trees and fountain.  You can find courtyards designed 2,000 years ago all over what was the Roman world surprisingly similar to the little pocket parks of Lisboa and the smaller cities that fill this country. According to a Wiki post Rome in the 3rd century CE had 1,423 drinking fountains. Today Rome has 50 monumental fountains and more than 2,000 fountains overall. While Roman courtyards were smaller the principles used there are the same as those used in Lisbon’s squares.

 

Until I began to write this and began to research the history of Roman courtyard use I had never heard of the courtyard effect. The gist of the concept is during the dark hours cooler night air sinks into the courtyard and flows into the surrounding rooms thus cooling them.   The rooms and surfaces are cooled until about noon the next day. Until noon the courtyard provides storage of cold air and cold air exchange with surrounding rooms. At noon, when the sun strikes the courtyard floor the temperature of air inside the courtyard increases gradually, causing the hot air to move up. This draws air from surrounding rooms into the courtyard, resulting in cooling for the rooms. Finally,  as the courtyard and the surrounding rooms get warmer, all the cool air leaks out, preparing the system for a new cycle in the next day. 

 

When you throw trees and fountains into the mix the cooling of the courtyard is enhanced. Trees in a courtyard give off cooling oxygen and facilitate the air exchange of the courtyard effect.  They also provide shade drawing out the period the courtyard stores cooler air.  Fountains assist in the cooling process the water temperature being usually below the air temperature. 

 

People in Lisboa love their past.  They love the fact that the city is so very old and that it has a past extending far longer than most major European cities.  They love it was once mighty and its people opened the age of discovery. With that passion they are loath to see ancient spaces disappear. They fight for their parks. You have got to love a place where they have not allowed the lust for money to destroy so many functional, sustainable cooling spaces.