A Walled Oasis | Studio MADe | Portugal 2015
1st Prize ex aequo
The area north of Maia was once comprised of a cluster of five small parishes that defined their own territories. Over the last 70 years, uncontrolled sprawl has resulted in a net of roads linking this cluster creating a co-urbe populated by 15, 000 people. What were once streets that acted as meeting places are now mere vehicular transit routes causing a loss of identity and a sense of dehumanisation within the territory. As roads are now mostly used for commuting, nodes around churches have declined as they were absorbed by this irrational sprawl. The consequence is a ghost city that lacks identity provoking a reflection upon the nature of the boundaries within the area.
This ambiguous situation of deterritorialization that arises from rapid urban growth requires our attention. The term itself presents a certain level of ambiguity attached to it.
DE- removal or reversal of something specified
TERRITORY – an area inhabited and defended by an individual animal or breeding group of animals.
Considering the root of the conflict, we believe that a territory must be demarcated, “enclosed”, anchored to the place and time.
The area is located at a crossroad that links Castelo da Maia with the industrial area of Gemude, the E1 highway and Maia’s downtown. About 15, 000 people live in Castelo da Maia and its co-urbe and commute to its five parishes (Germude, Barca, Gondim, San Pedro de Avioso and Castelo da Maia) as well as Maia and Porto. Castelo also hosts about 2000 students that commute daily to the Schools Complex of Castelo and another 4000 students that travel by Metro towards ISMAI. However, this human movement cannot be seen on the street further emphasising the ghostly condition of the area.
The public spaces have been relegated to poor quality intermediate points with no clear connections to the rest of the city. This, coupled with the lack of public space in the new urbanised areas, results in streets that are no longer places for meeting or gathering.
The suggested site is a 1950s industrial complex that once acted as a landmark as the height of its chimney contrasted the low urban density (fabric?) around it. The urban sprawl effectively caused the complex to deteriorate into a neglected ruin. However, its location remains appealing and advantaged due to its connectivity as it is one hundred metres from the Metro station, two hundred from the Schools Complex of Castelo and five hundred from ISMAI. As of now, the Industrial complex lies ‘beached’ in the middle of the urban fabric, disarticulating it.
This place has the potential to attract and, above all, to gather people to improve the existing public spaces which then balance the exclusive enclosed network of sports facilities.
The majority of the factory buildings do not seem to have a significant place in the collective memory, due to several taller extensions that the chimney is forced to compete with, distorting the identity of the complex. Therefore, we believe that the scale of these objects must be completely reduced until we are left with only what is essential.
We suggest the creation of a “NEW TERRITORY” that defines a space and gathers a group of “animals” that protect it.
Searching through our own memories for references, there is nostalgia for the streets that we grew up playing in and for the PLAYGROUNDS of democracy. Therefore, we seek to use them as urban re-activators.
This new territory offers the possibility of creating a quiet place, an OASIS in which we can isolate and protect ourselves from noise and traffic by generating a new link with the city. This OASIS hosts a series of public “playgrounds” open 24/7 and another set of spaces with enough scope and size to host human interaction complemented by a flexible activities program. We propose a continuous inhabited element that creates a calm, common and public space for the people of Castelo and its co-urbe while simultaneously reclaiming the ESSENTIAL from the factory and reappropriating it for this new public space.
With this approach, an exploration of the primitive was required to establish a protocol for the project. Using the ROMAN ROADS as a reference and their five steps of creation (to deforest, to level out, to demarcate, to lay the foundations and to add up), we propose:
- Deforesting everything built except block A, as they are random extensions that do not contribute to the whole and obstruct the original vision of a set of low buildings and a vertical chimney.
- Levelling out by recovering some common elements that can be used as a base such as old floorings and plinth beams.
- Demarcating the space through a masonry wall system that generates a threshold, like a homogenous built pathway that accommodates the proposed program within a horizontal scale – an element that creates that lost meeting point.
- Laying the foundations of a conscience and theoretical frame the supports future actions on similar situations.
Adding up a solid program attractive enough to fulfil the aim of bringing the community together.
We propose the creation of a new territory that recovers the spirit of the place, that deeply explores the primitive but with a new pattern of action: a walled structure that set the limits and then joins them. As we explore this continuous path, at last we discover this WALLED OASIS.
