Water over Water
This essay proposes to launch a platform for critical thinking about the increasing degradation of Lisbon’s riverfront and the divorce who has long settled between the city and Tagus river. After the construction of the industrial harbour in the end of the XIX century, Lisbon’s relationship with the river, until then so close, was dramatically shaken. It is imperative to reflect about the spaces created from this separation, seeing them as places of opportunity, that once brought to the city’s domain, can become true urban regeneration instruments.
“water over water” takes shape through the practical development of a contemporary proposal which claims its place as a mark in the riverside facade, introducing as well, an relational architecture. From this obvious need of connection between the city and it’s river, what first made is project possible was the naive intention of solving the problem through the river itself, once the biggest “weapon” of Lisbon’s growth.
on a more proximate approach, the project includes a network of sport and leisure areas, small museological spaces, always taking in account the value of the existing unoccupied structures of the harbour. This proposal plans to become a linear structure of sports and leisure, enhancing at the same time, all the port activity.
Despite of dreaming about a project that unites this riverfront, instead of being constantly interrupted by empty and forgotten areas, this individual project focus on an specific area.
Under sleep but full of history of his own, this place has the capacity to transform the structural relations of the city and the river. We have to enjoy this place of opportunities and celebrate what it has to offer - the river, the water and the sun.
the first intention was to transform this place in a big informal square - a public space, that enhances the relationship between the city and the river, and it’s people - a a public and multivalent equipment that offers us a chance to relate body-to-body with the river.
In this sense, the olympic and playful pools, emerge as a congruent, ideologist and pragmatic program.
