Periphery
The renovation of housing areas in the periphery of the great cities will be one of the major urban issues in the following decades. The majority of these neighbourhoods were built during the real estate boom of the ’90s and, after 30 years, have reached a critical point in their life cycle. The time has come to renovate and adapt these urban spaces to today’s functional and technical demands, making them more sustainable, accessible and inclusive.
The Urmeiras Neighbourhood is a clear example of this typical way of building in the ’90s: it’s a monofunctional neighbourhood with a non-existing public space dominated by the automobile. The idea of inserting new functions, besides housing, into this neighbourhood will be decisive to revitalize it, but the cohesion of its social tissue is dependent on the redefinition of the existing public space.
Public Space
The competition brief asked for the design of a municipal building with an auditorium, a canteen, a health and safety centre and a car silo.
We propose to locate the auditorium at the level of Quinta das Sapateiras (lower level), and the canteen at an intermediate level, creating a kind of “inhabited slope” that liberates the upper level from construction, allowing it to become a public space with an unobstructed view towards east. The new slope with a simple geometry organizes the existing public space and increases its surface, while at the same time fosters the relationship between the two neighbourhoods at different levels.
The new health centre is on the north side of the intervention area with the main entrance towards the new square.
The Towers
The competition brief also included the renovation of two housing towers, abandoned for more than 15 years.
The first 6 floors of the towers will be renovated and adapted to accommodate municipal offices. Because these floors are half-buried, to compensate for the lighting deficit, we propose the construction of a winter garden – a space with a triple height that functions also as an entrance hall and a connection space between the two towers.
The office spaces will be organized as “open spaces”. The desk areas will be located next to the natural light sources while the service and technical areas will be located on the opposite façades.
The renovation principle for the upper floors of the towers was to maintain as much as possible the existing structure, introducing only minor transformations to improve the spatial and environmental quality of the existing apartments.
The main transformation was the addition, in both towers, of a winter garden on the east façades, creating a semi-exterior space that not only increases the usable surface of the apartment but also improves the thermal comfort by creating a transition space between exterior and interior temperatures.
After the renovation, the towers will present a contemporary image, hopefully, an example and motivation for the future renovation of the rest of the buildings in Urmeiras.
program: municipal building, car silo, offices and collective housing architecture: João Fagulha, Raquel Oliveira landscape architecture: Oficina dos Jardins engineering: David Camões, OhmSor, Blueorizon, SNJP, Alice Cavaco client: Loures Municipality area: 19.317m2 location: Loures, Portugal budget: 12.000.000€ year: 2021 status: competition 1st place