Urban development of Loures
Location
Loures. Portugal.
Year
2007
Status
EUROPAN contest
Typology
Town planning
Awards
Second prize
Topic
Architecture, urbanism, sustainability, Infrastructure, Five Conditions

We decided to present ourselves to two of the "lots" of the EUROPAN 2017 contest. One of them would be in Loures, with the relevant characteristic of being the one with the lowest economic level and the other in Lillestrom, which had the highest level of wealth.
To these two very disparate places, we apply an urban development based on our five conditions .
These five conditions are key for the cities of the future, and with this exercise we can test them both in a rich neighborhood and in a more deprived neighborhood.
FIVE CONDITIONS
NO SATURATION . We understand saturation as a non-evolutionary state that blocks all future regeneration. Urban growth should be carried out through processes that are adapted to the context and time and not by a plan designed and imposed from the beginning. We propose non-saturating rules. New rules where a final state, a maximum of heights or construction capacity is not conceived in a static way. Norms that initiate agreements with currently saturated areas to initiate desaturation processes. For this reason, we introduce new tools on current rules such as “time”, “regulatory bandwidth” and “negotiation processes”.
PERMEABILITY. The urban structure must be permeable on multiple scales. The public space must be accessible and comprehensible for all the agents that participate in it and in turn all must have devices at their disposal to participate.
It is important to ensure that there are no waterproof urban nuclei within the city. Avoid elitist exclusive spaces and be able to give voice to all agents in all spaces. Furthermore, no built system will be impervious to environmental conditions, nature and biodiversity will be agents that must also participate in growth decisions.
NETWORK OF NON-PROGRAMMED SPACES. The current city is a set of spaces associated with specific programs. The fear of empty space without legislation, action or fence does not allow free spaces where the citizen chooses without restrictions how he wants to use it. We are committed to creating a network of non-programmed spaces at different scales and degrees of intervention and management . In this way, open spaces, empty warehouses, etc. will be protected.
URBAN RE-EVOLUTION. Demolishing and then rebuilding from scratch entails great energy and economic expenditure. It is therefore necessary to design tools that allow urban development taking into account pre-existing conditions and make it possible for all new constructions to be easily removable or adaptable to new uses. We must build with reversible systems to be able to dismantle and recycle them at a certain moment.
SYMMETRY OF DENSITIES. Current urban planning gives more importance to the design of some places compared to others and qualifies some to the detriment of others. Public space most of the time is the result of gaps between private or residential programs. Private spaces are determined by their density, occupation, construction, etc ... our proposal is to obtain symmetry in the design processes to deepen the values of public space and give it the same qualities and guarantees that the private space has to be built and preserved.



Credits
Architects
Manuel Álvarez -Monteserín
Manuel Pascual
Maria Carmona
Luis Belda
Juan Chacon
Laura Flor
Marta Catalan
Lucia Martinez
ZOOHAUS. Leon11 + Zira02 + Zuloark