Elements for the Design of a Literary Route: Miguel Torga in Coimbra

Contemporary cities are privileged spaces for commercial and cultural exchanges, where more than half the world’s population prefers to live, concentrating in themselves all that is best and worst in society. The design determines, in part, how we understand and live in the cities, very marked by factors associated with consumption, such as branding and promotional campaigns for commercial and cultural products. Nevertheless, spaces of concentration of Cultural Heritage need to be preserved and made known as a structuring element of cultural diversity. The issues of accessibility, both physical and cognitive, imply information processes where the experience and the way we enjoy the space are increasingly valued. The designer acts as a cultural mediator, identifying and activating disclosure tools to promote access to heritage, including its intangible dimension. In this article, we present a cultural route about Miguel Torga’s places of memory in Coimbra, connecting city and literature, based on the book “The creation of the world” in which we identify a set of excerpts to integrate the route. We also list a set of means, developed by communication design, to promote the author and the city in its tangible and intangible dimensions.