In the 16th century, Portugal established in São Tomé and Principe one of the most productive plantation economies in the tropics based on slave labour and sugar intensive monoculture. Later, from the mid-19th century to 1975, large plantations called Roças were developed to produce coffee and cocoa for highly profitable export production. As a result, at the beginning of the 20th century, São Tomé and Principe was the biggest exporter of cacao in the world. In these plantations, thousands of indentured workers were employed. As a result, roças embody the traces of merciless labour conditions and a spatial organisation designed for the privilege of Europeans and their hegemony. Nowadays, roças serve several purposes, ranging from luxurious hotels to houses of large communities in squatters, and still, several roças are in ruin, being consumed by nature. The analysis of this heritage is relevant since these settlements can be future-directed legacies, which can contribute to a global cultural overhaul and sustainable development. A comprehensive overview of this context allows us to understand the past and the present, considering tangible and intangible values embodied by these heritage plantations. Critical and diachronic studies on the colonial and contemporary heritage are integrated by investigating the spatial layout of roça Agostinho Neto and roça Água Izé in their original design and as they are today. Roças were initially designed to be isolated and hierarchical3 to optimize the production process and the trade export. Their original spatial organisations aim at segregating some of their inhabitants, while their territorial location makes them isolated regions inside São Tomé Island. This study aims to identity how the physical environment of roças have influenced and still influences human experience and behaviour and support the thesis that these settlements were designed hierarchically. Sensory access, behavioural affordance, and sociality are discussed by integrating critical perspectives arising from on-site observations and social surveys collected in November 2021 and coupled with the space syntax analysis.

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