URBAN COURTYARDS | E13 _ Santo Tirso
Europan 13 - Santo Tirso, Portugal
The aim of the project is to enhance the business and productive aspiration of Santo Tirso in Portugal and trigger a more established regional relevance. The project team consisted of Near Architecture (Cristiano Lippa, Fabiano Micocci), Alessandro Mangione, and Micromega Architecture & Strategies (Alexandros Zomas,Mara Papavasileiou).
This vision includes an intertwined relationship between the river system and the city, in a network that enhances all existing qualities and potentialities. This integrated multifunctional system built on an ever-changing landscape and on the icon of the market square, constitutes the framework for tourist interests, economic investments and daily practices.
Three North-South functional stripes will link the city centre to the river and its resources, by constituting a territorial system that is crossed transversally by the historical axis of the city centre. This system connects cultural, productive and ecological areas through proximity of functions, giving a strong role to the Fabrica Centre and focusing its centre on the Market square, the renovated vibrant heart of the city.
The Market square gains a new materiality by treating the ground as a patchwork of hard and soft surfaces, and a new feature, the three-dimensional metal grid that will shelter permanent and temporary activities. Movable panels can be easily arranged to obtain diverse configurations hosting multiple functions: established and official or informal and spontaneous. The three-dimensional grid embeds fabrics produced in the Fabrica as a work of art at the urban scale. The patchwork and the grid are interactive and adaptable systems that could trigger participatory processes and citizens' empowerment.
