Mondego River
Revitalization
Connecting a medieval city to it’s adjacent river
Ecole Spéciale d’Architecture
Studio José Gonçalves
Coimbra, Portugal
2015
1. residential bars
2. commercial spaces
3. underground library
4. library light wells
5. public plaza
6. parking structure
The medieval town of Coimbra sits on top of a hill, by the Mondego River. Despite their close proximity to the river, the people of Coimbra have little to no interaction with it. The site, a vast terrain of abandoned train tracks located right on the water, at the foot of the hill, is the ultimate opportunity to connect the two. The project is a descent towards the water – a decomposition of the site into stratum, a physical prolongation of the hill to the river. A connection between history and geography. The goal of this urban project is to re-energize the dense historic town of Coimbra and to offer it a wide-open public space with green areas, virtually inexistent today.
The focus of this project was on the residential bars. They consist of three apartment typologies, raised off the ground by structural columns which fully open up the ground floor to the plaza and create a sequence from exterior to interior.
The ground levels serve as pedestals, in which there are storage units for the apartments. They are pierced by passageways that connect all the outdoor spaces and create a promenade along the river.
