Three Proposals for Lisbon
Following the discussion of Lisbon’s urban development, its general master plan and the competition “Interventions in the City” promoted by Lisbon’s Architectural Triennial of 2007, ateliermob has been developing three different proposals for the next future of the city.The general feeling is that the discussion about Lisbon’s future has been held by and restricted to a few economical lobbies and their project teams, and that the majority of the projects for the city are, far beyond a public discussion. Our studio of architects living and working in Lisbon presents three proposals reclaiming that the discussion comes out into the streets.
2nd Circular Road
[awarded project on "Interventions in the City"]
The first proposal, awarded in the competition "Interventions in the City", is focused on the 2nd circular road, functioning at the present moment as a wall in the centre of the city. This high-way, with its well known jammed traffic, doesn't allow cars to flow normally. Barely on the centre of Lisbon, this urban element constitutes itself as a wall to the normal breakthrough of urban networks. Ateliermob proposes its progressive dismantling and disintegration, blurring it into Lisbon's urbanity.
Terraces
To promote a general revision of the way of constructing, the second proposal is influenced by ancient connections with Mediterranean culture and popular architecture, much more appropriated to Lisbon's climate and geographic characteristics, redesigning a city that progressively starts to loose its roof-ceilings to private spaces of collective use as Terraces.
New materialities
The last proposal concerns Lisbon's tremendous problem with water. During the last decades, due to an inexistent public politic of land uses, the massive construction of permeable areas was permitted (with buildings, buildings' additions, and paving), which originated the actual lack of urban soil for draining waters. On the other hand, new politics of reduction of speed limits in the centre of the city allow materials as asphalt (non permeable) to be rethinked and substituted for a brand new material that can absorb water.