The site is somehow a mix between the extended city, industrial city, low rise low density, agricultural, sub-urban zone where nothing and everything happens at the same time. Those situations areseparated by a highway that connects Porto to the north of Portugal.
On one side the industrial one we find the Ikea/Marshopping, on the other the eastern part of Matosinhos.
In this project my objective is to understand these two and design an urbanistic solution for the new social and economic situation that we found our selfs in.


The research in this project allow-me to understand that nowadays shoppings ocuppy the iconic function that used to belong to public and/or religious buildings. Shoppings are the new economic and cultural centers. This way they are now able to sustain exterior spaces.
As the new economic and cultural centers, and as usually they are in non qualified city zones it's about time to think about those spaces and how can we improve them.


At the other site of the highway we have a few house blocks. Those houses have between one and three stories. The vague terrain was divided in 50sq meters spaces so that the land could be distributed to the citizens with no cost. It's like the possibility of the new “personal sustainability”, everyone has a small piece of land to plant some vegetables. And all together is like an urban park, but with vegetables.
This park have two small buildings and an open space in one side, and a small forest on the other side. The small buildings creates some facilities that does not exist in the area or are too far away: a tavern, a small market and a multi purpose room for the cummunity.

To connect those two different worlds a pedonal bridge is created. This infrastructure allows the people from Matosinhos to cross the highway and makes the Ike/Marshopping part of the Matosinhos urban system. 



Used software:
·Archicad
·Adobe Photoshop
·Adobe Indesign
·Cinema 4d + Vray