The Architecture of Rural-urban Complexes through Typologies. The case of Maestrazgo (Teruel, Spain)

The Maestrazgo is a historical region located in the eastern part of the province of Teruel (Spain), madeup of fifteen municipal districts and numerous villages sheltered by the mountains of the Sierra de Gúdar.After the Christian Reconquest, military orders played a decisive role in controlling the territory. Theregion reached its peak at the end of the Middle Ages before the Industrial Revolution, thanks to theexploitation of livestock and the wool trade. The modern era, on the other hand, was marked by a drasticeconomic and demographic crisis in rural areas, which brought many of these villages to the brink ofextinction. This phenomenon - shared by large areas of the interior of the Iberian Peninsula - largelycoincided with the global development of urbanization and industrialization. Fortunately, the rural-urbancomplexes under study have hardly been affected by the transformations brought about by the modern era.This has favoured the preservation of the essence of vernacular architecture with few alterations. Thedefinition of the uses and the typological characteristics of the buildings in these villages reveal the flowof traditional daily life behind their thick stone walls. This study aims to explain and understand the raisond'être of these invariant architectural structures in a decisive period of the region's history, the 16th and17th centuries.