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(RE) Think Alcãntara Hub Throught a Hybrid Building _ Lisbon’s Central Library and Municipal Archive

Part 2 Project 2012
João Paulo Ferreira Torres
Universidade Tecnica de Lisboa | Portugal
The present Master’s Degree in Architecture Project under the theme “(Re) think the Alcântara Hub through a hybrid building” undertakes a research and reflection on theoretical concepts employed in the applied project of Lisbon’s Central Library and Municipal Archive.

For the last few years I sought a way to develop a process applicable to many similar projects. The ability to choose the location and speculate the possibilities of the project, made possible the achievement of other objectives.

The ability to recreate a work process, the idea of "Work in Progress" was crucial, allowing one to reflect and act with the right timing, from the architecture decisions to the graphical representation of the final drafts.

The influences of this thinking process were passed on by authors such as Joseph Fenton, Steven Holl and Rem Koolhaas, who have explored hybrid buildings from the twentieth century to the present. Koolhaas is particularly interesting in this matter for developing projects through an evolutionary process and method.

The work's organization begins in the urban scale, goes through with the building design and ends with the detail, focusing on a new vision of how hybrids spaces would be developed in the future.

The difficulties that the Alcântara territory presented were the basis for the concept theory – subsequently applied to the project – in which solutions are grounded on the opportunities at the infrastructure level resulting from the location.

The Alcântara Hub is interpreted as an Interdisciplinary Platform, an entry point to Lisbon’s historical city center, that incudes, within the building complex, a Library and a Municipal Archive.

The work process was fundamental to the growing awareness about the evolving nature of the architectural production as a "Work in Progress", essential to understanding the concepts applied in a contemporary context.


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2012
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