Architect：Brandão Costa Arquitectos

Location：Porto, Portugal; | ;View Map

Project Year：2022

Category：Passenger Terminals

The layout is simply two lines on the floor, at the edge of the buildable area, next to the railway line. These alignments establish a clear closure for the longitudinal development of the structure of the railway station and tackle the existing morphological anachrony. Its layout compromises the territory and assumes itself as a first step in the direction of bringing the scattered parts together. The first and longest line, in its longitudinality, introduces a subtle order that simultaneously imposes order and freedom of the pre-existences, dealing with all the fragile moments of the place in a single movement, uniting them.

A large triangular-shaped nave is formed, where buses and cars are collected under the construction at the city's "Eastern Gate", removing them from the urban centre. The proposed project is a territorial gesture that looks at the city in a broader context, using the detail of the programme and its complexity as a solution to establish the generic relationship of all the artificial and natural elements of the place and their articulated replacement in the urban map. The Terminal is designed as a linear infrastructural device, which clearly imposes a physical limit to the station and launches the place’s new physique.

The programme distribution is based on the basic idea of Simplicity. Given the functional complexity of the various components in so many levels (distributive, organic, mechanical and infrastructural), the proposal attempts to simplify the programme; it breaks it in a regulated and sequential plot, in Portico, extended over the layout area and summarized in a perceptible matrix in the structure and, consequently, in the architectural language. All areas of mechanical movement and parking of vehicles are established at the lower level of the territory: a large covered space, opened to the outside at both ends.

At the level above, the small support programmes are distributed over the terminal area in a modular sequence, levelled with the Natural Park, which hides the physical presence of the complex in its surroundings. This programmatic sequence makes way to a continuous gallery route, which is functional, distributive and recreational at the same time. Over this covered gallery, an aqueduct is established in its "thickness", to conduct and distribute all the infrastructural needs, creating a third overhead route. The latter, more scenic and entertaining, allows its users to enjoy the park, the view over the station, the movement of the trains and the atmosphere of the valley.

The urban park is the project’s ecological gesture that goes hand in hand with its topographic counterpart, and which settles, once and for all, the urban planning of the place. The green landscape, heavily forested, that extends over the entire area of intervention (50 000 m2), over the built-up area and the permeable area, is an urban lung of relevant scale, that clears the pressure of pollution of the place, visually regenerates it and humanizes its use.

The sustainability of the construction work resides only and simply in the rational use of its building components, reduced to their simple geometry and strict functional and infrastructural utility. Generally speaking, the building functions by natural ventilation, which sweeps through the large functional spaces. Its openings were calculated and its design planned to achieve a proportion of balance, lighting and ventilation.

Architect: Brandão Costa Arquitectos

Collaborators: Francisco Ascensão (coordination), Anna Kazimirko, Beatriz Ferreira, Damião Franco, José Pina, Luís Filipe Carreno, Rita Leite, Simon Ruey

Structural engineer: António Adão da Fonseca, Pedro Neto, Renato Bastos | adf consultores

Road design: Elza Mendes | cacao

Landscape design: Rita Guedes

Hydraulic engineer: Miguel Vale | abprojectos

Electrical engineer: Maria da Luz Santiago, Raul Serafim | rs associados

Mechanical engineer: Raul Bessa | get

Acoustic engineer: Rui Ribeiro |amplitude acoustic

Sinaletic design: Miguel Palmeiro |united by

Photography: Inês d’Orey (drone photo), Francisco Ascensão (architectural photos)

1. Facade cladding: Fair-faced concrete; Concrete face brick, type "Bloco face à vista Cimenteira do Louro”

2. Flooring: Granite cube; Concrete finished by helicopter

3. Windows: anodised aluminium in natural colour, type “Jofebar Fachada Ligeira”

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