Fellow, Garden and Landscape Studies
“Uncovering Colonial Lawscape” connects landscape depictions with legal documents involving Spanish, native, and mestizo agents across the Atlantic, answering the question of how law and landscape perform together in illustrated lawsuits and orders, and unfolding resistance practices through institutional procedures. This project studies manuscripts found in DO Rare Book Collection and compares them with atlases and maps set in the domains of the Habsburg dynasty, including Mesoamerica, South America, Andalusia, and the Canary Islands. Its results show how native and morisco agents got involved in the colonial legislative game, influencing the configuration of a diversity of territories and their landscape.
Manuel Sánchez García, also known as Manuel ‘Saga’, has a PhD in Architectural History from Politecnico di Torino (2022) and a PhD in Art History from Universidad de Granada (2022). He is a licensed architect graduated from Universidad de Granada (MArch, 2013) and holds a Masters in Architecture from Universidad de los Andes (Bogotá, 2016), where he performed as lecturer, researcher, and consultant until 2018. Saga’s work on the early modern Spanish Empire includes his dissertation titled “Siblings Overseas: Foundational Landscape, Law, Land Distribution and Urban Form in Sixteenth-Century Spanish Colonial Cities”, published volumes like “Granada Des-Granada” (Ed. Uniandes) and grant projects funded by institutions such as GAHTC. He currently occupies the role of Editorial Assistant of Architectural Histories, the journal of the EAHN, while also publishing dissemination articles on a variety of topics in media such as National Geographic Historia, Archdaily, and Fundación Arquia.