PROCEEDINGS OF TCL2016 CONFERENCE, INFOTA 2016; 479-489. 479 The fencing of a heritage: approaching a landscape from its controversies Maurício R. Pimentel; Roberto Verdum; Daniele Caron; Laura Rudzewicz; Janice M. S. Appel; João Luís Linck; Lucas M. Panitz Researchers at PAGUS – Landscape Laboratory Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil pagus.ufrgs@gmail.com Abstract The landscape is a departure point to undercover the relations between a society and its environment, with its inherent controversies and conflicts. Considering that, researchers from the PAGUS Landscape Laboratory (in Porto Alegre, Brazil) have organized a seminar to experiment different theoretical and methodological tools focusing on a specific urban landscape. The group expected to stimulate public debate on the polemic proposal of fencing Porto Alegre’s main urban park, and a protected heritage, Parque da Redenção. Based on security issues that idea has been raised by the city’s legislative and by local media since the 1990s. In a green 37 ha. area with different settings, the park is an important attribute of Porto Alegre’s landscape, as a provider of ecological services and historical landmark. Supposing the park was bounded, which landscape’s aspects and correlated features would be modified? How to raise the population’s awareness on the park’s fencing, or not fencing, and on its different outcomes? These questions driven an ephemeral site intervention performed on November 8th 2014. Beyond its goals, the experience resulted in a prolific dialogue among researchers from fields such as architecture, arts, biology, geography, social sciences and tourism studies. Keywords: Landscape, Urban parks, Site intervention, Pragmatics of space, Parque da Redenção, Porto Alegre (Brazil). Introduction This paper reports the experience of a multidisciplinary research group that operates in the city of Porto Alegre, a regional metropolis in southern Brazil with 1.4 million inhabitants in 2010. The Landscape Laboratory – PAGUS 1 is hosted at the Geography Department on the 1 More information can be found at https://pagusufrgs.wordpress.com