JOSÉ SARAMAGO
Public Design Competition for the Design of the Cruise Terminal of Lisbon
Program Cruise terminal and public space as a filtering line city / harbor
Team Valerio Franzone, 3C+T Capolei Cavalli A.A.
Client APL - Administração do Porto de Lisboa, S.A.
Collaborators Proges Engineering (structural engineering), Modimar S.r.l. / Consulmar Lda (marine engineering), Enetec Ingegneria (technological systems)
Location Lisboa, Portugal
Area outdoor 18.110 m2; indoor 8.020 m2
Year 2010
José Saramago is the new cruise terminal of Lisbon, it is the new filter between the city and sea. Usually, harbors can be assimilated to a borderline that divides the city from the sea. In fact, these two physically and systematically different places need an intermediate space, they need the physical thickening and the consequent programmatic enrichment of the element that separates them. Thickening a borderline means mediating between two different realities, it means conceiving a system that, through its structurization, is capable to generate a new place.
Thus, the project site and its closer extensions can be meant both as a linear space capable to host a cruise terminal and as a public space capable to welcome every inhabitant and visitor of Lisbon, even who is not going on a cruise.
This complex mediation system between two different realities can be named filtering line. In fact, the filtering line is an interaction system between the environment of the city and the one of the harbor, between their resources and possibilities. It reorganizes all the mobility flows of the area dividing the urban and the harbor ones; it predisposes the pedestrian paths and the connections between the city and the harbor; it rationalizes the harbor routes; it realizes the service facilities and mixed-use architectures to be used by travelers and to attract visitors; it transforms the harbor from simple infrastructure to an opportunity enriching the identity of the city.
Working on this interface zone means developing a complex urban project capable to connect different parts of the seafront with the rest of the urban pattern. From this point of view, the filtering line is a line that becomes a space system, a mix of activities and public spaces connected through pedestrian paths and creating a long promenade paysagée.
The filtering line is a complex system with a variable section, it’s a permeable element and not a limit for the city/harbor interaction as it includes both the functions of the city and the ones of the harbor finding a precise balance between them
