URBAN PROJECT | NÓ DO and the Northwest Gateway

Gonçalo Duarte Pita Architecture Dissertation | Instituto Superior Técnico Coordinator: Prof. Carlos Moniz de Almeida Azenha Pereira da Cruz

ABSTRACT

The following report presents the work carried out for 2010/2012 Final Project course.

The conducting element of this report is the impact road infrastructures may have, particularly when inserted in the urban context, whether they are generators of that context or the main cause of its frag- mentation. The mono-functionality of the road layout, which is a consequence of a mono-disciplinary approach to its conception, led to the incapacity of the structural road system to be part of the contem- porary city as an integrated actor of the urban space and therefore becoming an intrusive element.

Supported by a reflection on road infrastructures, the goal of this report is to analyze the Lisbon struc- tural route consisting of Calçada de Carriche and Av. Padre Cruz. — the Northwest Gateway —, and the conception of a project on Nó do Lumiar, its main articulation point. Being one of Lisbon’s main gateways for centuries, the Northwest Gateway was responsible for defining the mobility structure of the North Ring when it was still part of the city’s periphery. Today, due to redefinitions of its route and section, it is an element of urban discontinuity along with other high performance roads as Eixo N-S and 2ª Circular.

Nó do Lumiar is at this moment a dysfunctional urban centre due to the powerfull impact of its road system. Despite allowing an effective accessibility to automobiles on a broader range of the territory, its impact does not allow for a comfortable use of the space where it’s inserted, a space made up of elements of undeniable historic, patrimonial, cultural and administrative value. This project aims to re- qualify this site, rebalancing the different forces inserted in it, allowing the creation of a rich, high quality public space.

INFRASTRUCTURE | CENTRALITY | MOBILITY | CONTINUITY | DIVERSITY

1 The road infrastructure

The road infrastructure is an element constantly marginalized from a broader reflection on city creation. The traffic growth led to an excessive specification of the road system design and traffic flow manage- ment, making it a faster and more effective type of mobility and therefore allowing it to grow. The basic design created to meet those goals proves it. A highway is a territorial piece with very specific features despite being made of different modular elements that offer some flexibility, as allowing a smooth tran- sition with another highway or with a local road system. However these specific qualities inevitably lead to the creation of discontinuities on the surroundings.

The need for speed, which leads to a need for greater security, is the main aspect responsible for the incompatibility between the conception and the surroundings. A highway needs a central reservation (usually achieved by a traffic barrier), with larger lanes and shoulders, with its limits defined by guar- drails and verges, everything with a security purpose. All these features do not enable a natural mesh between the road infrastructure and the urban space, slicing it into different parts or creating difficulties for a new urban fabric to emerge. The road infrastructure, instead of working as one more layer inserted in the urban space, ends up creating an impenetrable, and at times impassable, “securitarian trench”.

2 The North Ring Fig 1

Until mid 20th century, the North Ring was a zone marked by a rural lifestyle, preserving a peripheral status in contrast with the historic city centre. However, it was the North Ring, where there were farms and villas attached to ancient roads leading to the capital that provided it with goods and gave shape to the suburban landscape. At the intersection of these roads were the main population settlements, with prominence to Lumiar, Luz and Charneca. In the first decades of the 20th century, the first palace-like residences emerged, as a complement to the suburban character of the North Ring. In the 1950s, the first land allotments were made, especially along das Linhas de Torres, the main road connec- ting the urbanized Lisbon with the yet peripheral Lisbon.

For many times, and since de 19th century, different administrative teams of the Lisbon municipality search for ways of integrate this peripheral ring into the rest of the city, through the creation of new avenues that would structure the whole capital. However, various proposals with the same goal were not executed and the Lisbon road system ended up having the layout that prevails to the present day, supported by two radial axes that start in Downtown Lisbon — departing from Av. da Liberdade and Av. Almirante Reis — and ending when they arrive at 2ª Circular.

The road infrastructure is one of the main defining elements of the North Ring, where Eixo N-S, 2ª Circular, Av. Padre Cruz, Calçada de Carriche and CRIL pass by. The concentration of highway roads in this city zone can be defended by the city growing style, which led the northern areas — , Lu- miar, Ameixoeira, Charneca — to remain forgotten from the urban planning. This situation was respon- sible for the suburban character of the North Ring to stay practically untouched until mid 20th century as a vast, expectant area. Therefore, the North Ring had enough free space to develop a big part of the investment in road infrastructures, providing the city with a mobility system that allows a fast crossing and a fast intra-municipal commutation.

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North Ring 2ª Circular Eixo N-S Northwest Gateway Fig 1 North Ring | Adaptation: bing.com/maps

3 Northwest Gateway and Nó do Lumiar Fig 2

Done through a road “embedded” in a valley connected to Várzea de Loures — Calçada de Carriche —, where it was always more comfortable to surpass the existing topography, the North Gateway would continue through Alameda das Linhas de Torres until reaching Campo Grande and having Nó do Lumiar as its main articulation point. However, with the growing pressure upon Alameda das Linhas de Torres in the mid 20th century, as a consequence of the population growth in the North Ring and in the Lisbon periphery, the Northwest Gateway changes the second half of its route for the new road Av. Padre Cruz, a highway similar to Calçada de Carriche.

In Nó do Lumiar there is a clash of a vast number of roads with different functions and scales. Besides Calçada de Carriche, Av. Padre Cruz and Eixo N-S, it can still be found Alameda das Linhas de Torres, Estrada da Torre, Azinhaga da Cidade, Rua Prof. Manuel Valadares, Rua Alexandre Ferreira, Rua do Lumiar and Estrada do Lumiar. With Nó do Lumiar as an area with this big confluence of routes and provided with a big offer of public transportation — including the subway system — and close to various facilities of undeniable value, Nó do Lumiar needs to work as a public space capable of dealing with the different requirements inflicted on it.

It is characterized by a big diversity of urban typologies. The west side is mainly made up of old farms and villas from 16th to the 18th century divided by narrow roads, most of the times without a distinction between the space for vehicles and the space for pedestrians. The east side is mainly made up of seven to fifteen floors high residential buildings from the 1970s and 1980s. The centrality of Nó do Lumiar is also influenced by the diversity and importance of the uses existing there. In this centre is found Fregue- sia do Lumiar, Cemitério do Lumiar, Museu do Teatro, Museu do Traje, de Monteiro-Mor and, in the surroundings, Parque do Vale Grande and Quinta das Conchas e dos Lilases.

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Fig 2 Nó do Lumiar | Adaptation: bing.com/maps

4 The whole Northwest Gateway, but specially Nó do Lumiar, is a space that owes its own existence and simultaneously its problems to road infrastructures. This is an example of the influence these com- munication systems have on the territory, being even capable of generate centralities. However, this influence has to be controlled and taken into consideration by urban planning and therefore not allowing the mono-functionality of its different elements which leads to a difficult interaction between them or even to the invalidation of the whole. Right now in Nó do Lumiar, the road system prevails, preventing:

• the adequate operation of the municipal and local road system

• the existence of a high quality pedestrian mobility system

• the people’s knowledge and usage of public facilities of undeniable municipal and national impor- tance

• the adequate preservation of sites and buildings with patrimonial and historic value

• the creation of a high quality public space

It is clear how harmful the outcome of a mono-disciplinary approach to the design of infrastructures can have on a public space like Nó do Lumiar. The urban planning, which always requires multi-disciplinary approach, has inevitably to assume an important role on it. Functionally related with its surroundings or not, just an approach with that quality can allow for the conception of road infrastructures to be confron- ted with the natural complexity of the public space.

5 Consequences of the conclusion of Eixo N-S and CRIL on 2ª Circular

2ª Circular has a layout resembling a highway, with a central reservation done by a traffic barrier and, along the majority of its extension, with verges making it higher than its surroundings. Despite these features, the city continued to grow beyond it, however, without the same quality or structure as before. 2ª Circular, as an urban barrier, is not just evidence today, but it also as an effect on people’s “mental map”, who have almost no knowledge of the Lisbon that exists north of it.

The width of 2ª Circular made sense until now, being one of the main roads for motorized vehicles to cross Lisbon (including large goods vehicles, since there wasn’t a better solution) as well as a com- mutation channel for the city. The high pressure put on this road has always implicated constant traffic congestions. But with the conclusion of two new structural roads in the last years — Eixo N-S (2007) and CRIL (2011) — 2ª Circular traffic can and will be reduced.

Actually, observing the Monthly Average Daily Traffic (MADT) in 2ª CircularFig 3, it is possible to verify that, starting from April 2011, the month CRIL was concluded, the MADT began to decrease signifi- cantly, reaching 83.000 vehicles in March 2012, when it had never been below the 120.000 mark.

The conclusion of Eixo N-S and CRIL was able to really reduce the traffic in 2ª Circular, being this phe- nomenon still in process. This situation is clearly taken into consideration by the new Lisbon city plan (CML, 2011; p.2) that proposes for 2ª Circular (...) its conversion into a new urban avenue, to patch North Lisbon to the rest of the city, favoring the creation of new economies and consolidating an axis that extends from IC19 to Prior Velho and to the waterfront through Av. Marechal Gomes da Costa.

With a new paradigm in 2ª Circular enabling its own transformation into a “urban avenue” and with the conclusion of Eixo N-S allowing (...) an improvement to mobility conditions in Av. Padre Cruz (IEP, 2004: p.3), it makes sense as well to re-think the Northwest Gateway as a road with a different width and therefore offering the conditions to strengthen urban continuities on the North Ring. The route made by Calçada de Carriche and Av. Padre Cruz — including Nó do Lumiar — has a sectioning effect on the North Ring as critical as the one 2ª Circular has on the whole city.

CRIL conclusion 180.000 160.000 140.000 120.000 100.000 80.000 60.000 40.000 20.000 0 1 0 9 8 7 6 1 0 9 8 7 6 1 2 0 1 9 0 8 9 7 8 6 7 5 6 201 201 200 200 200 200 201 201 200 200 200 200 200 | 201 | 201 | 200 | 200 | 200 | 200 | | | | | | | | 201 | | 201 | | 201 | | 200 | | 200 | | 200 | | 200 l l l l l l r r r r r r t t t t t t t n n n n n n n Ju Ju Ju Ju Ju Ju Ab Ab Ab Ab Ab Ab Ou Ja Ou Ja Ou Ja Ou Ja Ou Ja Ou Ja Ou Ja MADT (n. of vehicles) Fig 3 2ª Circular — MADT | IEP - SICIT

6 Project | Basic Concept

The outstanding and most responsible aspect for the present urban state of this site is definitely the disorganized layout of the road infrastructure which ends up causing serious problems in Nó do Lumiar. A good solution to fight this aspect may be the actual solution for a whole range of problems prevailing here, like the absence of a high quality public space.

As already mentioned, Nó do Lumiar is an “articulation point” in the road infrastructure of the North Ring. But it is exactly this function that fails. The commutation processes between the different roads are not the most obvious, the fastest or the most comfortable ones; or in other words, they are not op- timized. The final result is a site cut in pieces by asphalt and a consequent unclear, disorganized and disqualified public space. The common solution used to solve this problem is widely known.

The roundabout, as an element to solve road intersections, has been used during the last decades in with little discretion. This has resulted in an overuse of this type of solution in the urban lands- cape. In most cases in this country, the roundabout only solves the intersection problem and does not add any other value to the public space. In other cases, the intersection problem doesn’t even ask for a roundabout.

However, in Nó do Lumiar, due to the unusual number of confluences, with very different functions and scales, the roundabout is practically inevitable. But in this case, because of the wide territory these confluences occur, a roundabout needs to have an extension not shorter than 200 meters. Despite this unusual length, there are urban solutions where an intersection is made with a system similar to a rou- ndabout but with a different designation. Praça do is a paradigmatic example of that situation. It is a square, not a roundabout, because, despite having a similar road circulation, it offers a qualified public space capable of overshadow that function Fig 4.

Fig 4 Praça do Rossio | www3.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de

7 It’s exactly this kind of multi-functionality of the urban space that can be created in Nó do Lumiar. With the inevitability of conceiving a big road intersection, there’s an opportunity to think about a new quali- fied space inside of it, and therefore to cease the lack of a recognizable public space. The size of this new square actually allows for the existence of buildings inside, making it an even more multi-functional site and capable of dealing with the different dynamics in Nó do Lumiar.

A geometrical relation with an ancient axis was sought: the axis generated by Alameda das Linhas de Torres and Rua do Lumiar. With the available space and the position of each confluent road, the rou- ndabout was oriented perpendicularly to this axis, which re-introduces a lost East/West route in this territory that had vanished because of the Northwest Gateway Fig 5, 6.

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Existing buildings Proposed buildings Green Space - grass Sidewalk Sidewalk — square Roads Low speed roads Trees Eixo N-S viaduct Fig 5 Plan

Fig 6 Model — Praça do Lumiar

8 Despite the difficulties of this site, the planned intervention offers solutions for its main affecting pro- blems. If the complexity of an Urban Project was already known, it is pretty clear how hard it gets when dealing with contexts which, due to the great and diverse amount of requirements, demand a hard (and sometimes impossible) commitment between the different dynamics of the urban space.

The analysis of the Northwest Gateway and the evolution of the Lisbon road infrastructure, allows for the understanding that, most likely, the moment to re-think Nó do Lumiar, Av. Padre Cruz and Nó do Lumiar has just now arrived. The traffic volumes demanded until a few years ago did not enable an effective transformation of the elements that constitute the Northwest Gateway and create a more pedestrian friendly layout capable of effectively patch the surrounding urban fabrics. The execution of Nó do Lumiar proposal before the conclusion of Eixo N-S and CRIL would most likely not offer a public space of the same size, with a fair balance between its different dynamics.

Through the work on Nó do Lumiar, it is also clear that the local authorities need to commit to the res- ponsibility of designing the infrastructures and its surroundings, whether they have a local or national scale, without ever forgetting the importance of the multi-disciplinary approach.

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