What time has the time of the garden of São João da Ponte Park?

How important is time in the way we experience and feel urban public spaces and in the relationship we develop with these physical spaces?

 

What time and what spaces, we might ask. One possible answer: time as we perceive and feel it flowing in squares, gardens, streets and in the spaces we share with others in our daily social lives, whenever we pass through them, running, walking, driving; when we stop there and contemplate them; when we smell their scent, depending on the task at hand, the time on calendars, clocks, the seasons, the time of our bodies, the rhythm or pace we choose or to which we are subject.

 

Filipa Matos Wunderlich, professor of urban design at the University College London, argues that rhythm is one of the key elements in our perception and experience of time in urban public spaces. What rhythms make up these spaces, Filipa asks in her various empirical studies on the subject (Wunderlich, 2023).  Thinking about rhythms means thinking about movement, repetitions, regularities, cycles, speeds, intensities, and changes in particular organizations and arrangements that make up and define the identity of a given space. Inspired by philosopher Henry Lefebvre’s rhythm analysis and sociologist Eviatar Zerubavel’s work, both focused on the rhythms of everyday life in cities, Filipa argues that the rhythms that define the identity of an urban space comprise several dimensions, or types of rhythms, including sociocultural, natural, sound, spatial, olfactory, and others… It is these rhythms, which integrate and combine attributes of nature and interactions between individuals, space, and objects, that shape how we feel and represent the time of a place and, thus, the emotional and affective connection we have with it (Tuan, 1977).

 

In this regard, I thought about the special connection I have with the garden at São João da Ponte Park in Braga, and the image I have of it — to what extent and how much I like that space, and the memories I have of it, are related to the rhythms that characterize its daily life and distinguish it from other urban gardens?

 

What will it be like to go into the garden with this concern, to consciously listen to the different types of rhythms that together define what Filipa calls the “Symphony of a place” (2008)? What is the time of this place (Lynch, 1972), that is, of “my” garden?

 

Located at the end of Avenida da Liberdade [Liberdade’s Avenue], near the base of Monte do Picoto [Mount Picoto], the Parque da Ponte [Bridge Park], renovated in 2016, covers approximately seven and a half hectares. It consists of an older outdoor area on the east side, where the chapel of St. John stands under dense trees; and an interior part, on the west side, with an artificial lake surrounded by sequoias, lime trees, firs, cedars, holly, camellias, and cork oaks, a garden that fits the image of the 19th-century Romantic cultural movement (Andresen, n.d.; Ferreira, 2024).

 

 

Figures 1 a 4. Interior of the Park

 

In the many years I have lived in the city of Braga, I always felt that the Parque da Ponte garden was a separate space, less than real, which feels slow and can make us slow down, even if the purpose is to use it as a corridor to get to the city more quickly, or as a running track.

 

Figura 5. Corrida

 

The lake, the water flowing in the fountain, the constant sound of the water running, the slow movement of the ducks splashing around, the wind blowing through the treetops, someone feeding the pigeons that peck grain by grain at the crumbs scattered on the walkway by the lake… The natural order guides the feelings of calm, tranquility, and pleasure that the space awakens, even though this time, or tempo, to use a term from musicology, can be disturbed or punctuated by sudden events, human or natural: the cry of a heron, the sound of balls being kicked, human voices, the noise of a leaf blower, someone playing the guitar, the opening of the irrigation system…

 

 

Figures 6 e 7. Water flows

 

The rhythms of the Parque da Ponte garden vary depending on the time of year, the day of the week, and even the time of day. Part of the routine are the human and mechanical sounds produced by the group of municipal workers who cross the garden every day at around 7:30 a.m. with either hand-pulled or motorized carts, each with its own destination. A kind of street parade that announces the dawn of the day in that space, which awakens lazily and slowly every day. The slowness of the awakening is also marked by the play of lights and shadows, with sunlight timidly and respectfully flooding the physical space of the park as the time of the day progresses. The rotation of the sun throughout the day influences the spatial and sociocultural rhythms that mark the identity of that place, certainly, and, I would say, is crucial to the feeling of tranquility, security, and comfort that we feel there.

 

But life in the park is also shaped by other rhythms that are typical of that space. On Tuesdays, the day of the weekly street market in Braga, which extends along the edge of Mount Picoto, the sound of iron being hammered as market stalls are set up and taken down is part of the park’s atmosphere at dawn and in the early afternoon. In the summer, during school holidays, there are several groups of young people who make the space a daily meeting point to chat, play ball, or stop in the middle of a mountain bike ride; couples who sit on benches or blankets to spend the afternoon; grandparents who take their grandchildren for a walk; and groups who meet to enjoy a meal together. The arrival in Braga in recent years of many migrants, particularly from the Brazilian community, has brought a whole new dynamic to this space and with it a renewed image, far removed from the stigmatized image of the past.  This dynamic is expressed not only on specific occasions (Pradel, 2013), as the garden is the venue for several annual events organized by that community, but also on a regular basis, especially when the weather is inviting and allows for sociability (Simmel, 1917/1981) and conviviality (Illich, 1973) and thus the feelings of familiarity and well-being that are part of the experience of this garden.

 

Figure 8. Lake at Parque da Ponte

 

I believe that in this feeling of being outside Braga while in Braga, in the magic that results from the rhythms and tempos of this place, what some call the “soundscape” plays a very important role (Schaffer, 1977), an idea that refers to the sound environment that characterizes the garden, the set of sounds, background sounds, clean sounds, which resonate and alternate in different patterns of intensity, regularity, duration, and repetition over the days, weeks, and seasons… At the very moment I am writing this text, the sound experience of the Parque da Ponte garden has been completely altered by the reconstruction work on a building adjacent to the space. The motorized or mechanical sounds that used to be part of the background have become part of the foreground for most of the day. The aural experience of this place has changed and, with it, its potential to transport us to a harmonious and balanced beyond. Unfortunately, we do not have the power of Cesariny’s “The Birds of London”:

 

“London birds
sing the winter through
as if the cold were
maximum comfort
in parks snatched
from heavy traffic
on dark streets snowed
under harshening skies
London birds
speak of summers
risen in splendour
and of moons poured
over such colourless squares
they seem like cloths
of gardens that sprout
beneath ice mantles
as if ice were
the finest embroidered linen
of houses like the one
where Rimbaud ate
and slept and laid
his desperate life
narrow yellow stripe
roughly parallel
between all and nothing…”

 

 

Zara Pinto-Coelho

Braga, September 2025

Published in September 12, 2025

 

References

 

Andresen, T. (s/d) (Coord.). Jardins históricos do Minho. https://www.minhoin.com/fotos/editor2/minhoin/gca/ajh_jhm_i_20230705.pdf

Cesariny, M. (S/d). Poemas de Londres. https://www.portaldaliteratura.com/poemas.php?id=692

Ferreira, R. (2024, 24 de fevereiro).  O centenário do Parque da Ponte. Correio do Minho. https://correiodominho.pt/cronicas/o-centenario-do-parque-da-ponte/15796

Illich. I. (1973). Tools for conviviality. Harper & Row.

Lynch, K. 81972). What time is this place? Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Pradel, B. (2013). Rythmes événementiels et aménagement des espaces publics à Paris, Bruxelles et Montréal. Loisir et Société / Society and Leisure, 36(1), 78-93.

Schafer, R. M. (1977). The tuning of the world. Destiny Books.

Simmel, G. (1917/1981). La sociabilité. Exemple de sociologie pure ou formale. Sociologie et Épistémologie (pp. 121-136). PUF.

Tuan, Yi-Fu (1977). Space and place. The perspective of experience. University of Minnesota Press.

Wunderlich, F. (2023). Temporal urban design. Temporality, rhytm and place. Routledge.

Wunderlich, F. (2008). Symphonies of urban places: Urban rhythms as traces of time in space. A study of ‘urban rhythms’. https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1314821/