Date: 2007/...

Location: Algiers, Algeria

Area: 91 640 sqm

Client: Parque Expo/Wilaya de Argel

Project coordinators:
João Ferreira Nunes, Carlos Ribas.

Project collaborators:
Iñaki Zoilo, Jan Derveaux, André Teixeira, Rui sequeira, Marta Palha, Ana Henriques, Bernardo Faria.

Architecture:
GB Architects - Gonçalo Byrne

This work is integrated in a possible urban rehabilitation of a series of transversal streets from the historical centre of the city of Alger. More specifically, this project pretends to assume the evidence of the axe that connects the monumental conjunction with a port zone that nowadays appears deactivated and unused. The constitution of the axe, whilst the space with urban identity and proper function, is supported by a group of precise objectives: the establishment of a concrete link that’s passable in a comfortable way, in between the monumental conjunction and the bay; The construction of an urban event of great relevance, simultaneously entertaining and tourist, symbolic and representative, cultural and didactic; the creation of a catalyst moment of contextual transformation, justifying the integration of existing equipments of great interest and rich of content, but not involved within an productive interrelation, which is now possible and desirable; The definition of a bipolar urban event, creator of a dynamic of transversal fluxes between the monumental conjunction  (acquainted as an exaltation of National History and Identity) and the new structures culminant from the axe, above the bay, giving a sight on the future and the Algerian function, within the heart of the Mediterranean, in the construction of the world in the XXI Century.