The project is based on an exploratory study whose main subject is the whole estuary of the River Tagus in Lisbon, taking it in its entirety as a single landscape and as the centre of a diffuse metropolis moving around it: an urban sea, in short. This idea has enabled us to get beyond a mere analysis of architectural figuration and arrive at an understanding of the interrelationships of a true consolidated urban fabric, and also of the river estuary as a landscape in which that fabric is developed. Taking a day as the allotted time for the execution of the project, we see how the river becomes a surface reflecting mechanical movements where the tides turn it into an ever-changing painting. This great work mutates over time, and because it is executed with bioluminescent algae it can be observed from three different viewpoints: from the city, from the boats crossing the river and also from hot-air balloons. In the course of that day the river will gradually vanish as it flows out into the ocean and be lost for ever.

An action on the frontline between the land and the sea, on the coastline to the east of Tenerife, in the neighbourhoods on the southside of Santa Cruz de Tenerife.

The intervention interacts with a steep rugged orography, fluctuating on the limits of the territory. It outlines a permeable frontier between earth and water, between gully and gully, generating places for simply being and places for leisure. The idea is to bring the user into closer contact with the true essence of the place.

Site: Porto, Portugal

Area: 335.500 m2 (3,5 km margen derecho del río Duero)

Client: SRUSociety for Urban Requalification of the Baixa in Oporto, S.A.

Chronology: May 2007 – Concourse started / February 2008 – 1st place achievement

Included in the wider concept of urban requalification, the project for the new Waterfront in Oporto has in terms of project-scale a quite elastic approach: it moves with masterliness between the territorial and local scales in the both meanings of understanding the place, locality analysis, made in parts throughout the 3.5km length of the waterfront, and the projectual response.

The project underlines basically two aspects: at first the strategic characteristics of the solution, not easy to be concretized due to the great difference between the high number of projects along the waterfront, further reason to connect the project to mainly to a territorial scale; secondly, it demonstrates how the solution proposed, thanks exactly to its being related to the territorial scale, manages to find easily the impanation in architectonical and landscape scale projects.

The project proposes a promenade through the spaces containing the various ambiences of the garden. The visit crosses through the biotopes characteristic of tropical geographies, in between the historical acclimatisation garden and the new proposed programmes, in which visitors are accompanied along the way by water in various forms of expression.

Location / Frente marítimo de Salerno

Client / Comune di Salerno

Area / 80 ha (7 km de costa)

Date Competition / March 2008

The competition is intended to enact a rezoning of the whole of the seafront of the southern Italian city of Salerno. At present, the meeting point of the city and the sea is defined by some precarious constructions, a wasted space devoid of any identity, and a poor beach line. All of that further underscored by some worrying erosion problems alongside the whole of the coast.

The project protects the seafront by means of a system of immersed barriers, articulating a number of spaces as a support of various areas at the beach and city level, formally materialised responding to the changing suggestions that the nature of the city offers to the sea.

Location: Benidorm, Alicante

Date: Competition. first prize. 2002

Design 2003

Ongoing

The scheme for the West Beach Promenade in Benidorm proposes a radical innovation in terms of what different promenades the world over have hitherto been.

Basically, promenades are planned with the object of constructing a borderline that protects towns from the violence of the sea, at the same time as they organize a circulation system parallel to the coast, the maritime facades of such towns being constructed on this borderline.

In our scheme Benidorm’s West Beach Promenade is structured as a transitional band that also permits such different problems to be solved as sanitary sewers, rainwater runoffs, accesses to the beach without architectural barriers, communication with underground parking beneath the promenade, and so on. It will allow for sitting and strolling, being constructed as a place with a life of its own, an organic layout, a reminder of a cliff-face or of the sea-swell, delicate honeycomb surfaces that generate areas of light and shade, convexities and concavities that gradually create an interplay of platforms and levels which will permit their use as recreational areas of leisure or of meditation.

The promenade is built of the one material, white concrete, incorporating the benches and elements of street furniture, presenting by means of textures and colors the different finishes of the paving.