Embracing
Embracing
Embracing: taking in or including as a part, item, or element of a more inclusive whole. The project attempts to create a diversity of social-environmental ecosystems dealing with the topic of the public (society) and the private (individual) needs in and holistic, integrated manner through the notion of what we call EMBRACING THE GREEN. In order to achieve these goals, the project presents a three-folded colonization strategy combining and interrelating the following parameters: the green -understood as the existing Sintra-Cascais Nature Reserve and new potential green spaces; a networked infrastructure of connective tissue enhancing the already existing mobility systems with the newly proposed paths joining private and public spaces through its recreational, social features; and finally the housing programme as means of delimiting new formations of ways of inhabiting. #1- EXPANSION We believe that the Sintra-Cascais Nature Reserve is the key feature for the area, working not only as an attractor of natural life and outdoor activities but also possibly as a major sustainable backbone for the development for the new Cascais urban settlement. The first strategy would be to conceive a controlled expansion of the Sintra-Cascais Nature Reserve from the west end of the study area towards the far north-east side linking both extremes through a natural green corridor that would host the TLS line service with its two stops. #2- COLONIZING THE GREEN A lense-shaped networked infrastructure will then colonize and articulate the green corridor with its immediate surroundings, through a sequence of medium to large scale green open public programmed spaces integrating the existing urban fabric and mobility structure. Thus, the new infrastructure not only merges together the Cascais Hospital on the east with the Nature Reserve on the west, but also re-structures and renews Cabreiro's urban tissue on the north bringing a cohesive link between the north and the new urbanization on the south-east -the project site. This lense-shaped networked infrastructure is in itself an integrated place-holder to be populated by the future dwelling ecosystems. The infrastructure consists of inner vehicular roads, pedestrian and cycling paths running along the periphery of each lense connecting the programme from the most private to the most public social space. This network attempts to reinforce, on one hand, the social interaction where its path converge generating open public plazas; and on the other hand, healthy life through experiencing the green qualities of the proposal via cycling and walking paths over the motored vehicles ones, enhancing a sustainable way of living. #3- POPULATING We recursively adopt the idea of embracing the green within the articulation of the whole programme of the proposal, but basically in the way the dwelling developments are conceived. The dwelling is based on a lense form where public and private spaces alternate from an inside to an outside condition and an in-between phase. The above mentioned networked infrastructure is then populated by these different lenses. In this manner, a first type of dwelling is characterized as a subsidised block of apartment with the minimum required square metres located in the core or centre of the lense and surrounded by a communal green space (green in the outside - programme in the inside). Inverting this relation -now the green is in the inside and the programme on the outside- a second type is designed. In this case, the green is enclosed by row of houses, giving the opportunity to have a more secluded, introverted while protected communal green space. Finally, an in-between state of dwelling organization emerges, where both the green and the programme are scattered in the plot creating smaller communal and social places. The concept for the houses follows, at the same time, the logic of embracing the green and a communal space. Basically the dwelling massing shares a communal space in-between units allowing social interaction and spatial continuity from the inside core of the lense to its outside. Each housing unit has a private internal green patio matching individual family needs. There is a total integration between the dwelling lenses, the networked infrastructure and the natural green corridor through the acts of EXPANSION, COLONIZING and POPULATING the GREEN, where all parts perform ecological, social, environmental and recreationally. The project guarantees a social integration featured by spatial communities enhancing a sustainable way of living. In this way, we can understand a sustainable city through its coexistence and relation of its multiple characters: balance between new and preexistence urban structures; connectivity of social, communal shared spaces; variations of dwellings according to new ways of living, all the latter stitched or joined through the Sintra-Cascais Nature Reserve. To be sustainable means to be performative, active, interactive and economic.