Date: 2003/2009

Location: Lagos, Portugal

Area: 42.000 sqm

Client: Municipality of Lagos

Project Coordinators:
João Ferreira Nunes, Carlos Ribas

Project Collaborators:
Iñaki Zoilo, Maria Lima, Ana Paiva, Joana Barreto, Mafalda Silva, Bernardo Faria, Pedro Cortez, Nuno Guerreiro

Architecture:
Carlos Ribeiro, João Jácomo - ARKHÉTYPOS
Bernardo Faria, Pedro Cortez, Nuno Guerreiro

The proposal presents a solution developed out of a reading of the intervention area that diagnosed tensions and contradictions inherent to a space left empty in relation to the massive growth of the city. The working space is thus an emptiness, a place without either functions or permanent physical content, an empty negative.
The project proposed only the consolidation of this space as a scenario and physical support for simple occurrences, for moments whose consistency is merely that of the sociability of people, their experiences, and their emotions. Much more than imposing a form, it sets out a fundamental orientation that this proposal would be able to suggest in establishing relations between the site and the people and thus becoming, as a public space project, relevant to the city not only for the physical space occupied or for the imposing character of its image, but for the meaning it is attributed by people, through their daily actions, in moments as comely as an afternoon spent with young children or an early summer’s evening with friends.

A space that would be sufficiently elaborate to attract and to respond to all the demands of highly diverse usages but sufficiently simple so that it may be completed by the experiences of people, so that it remains in the memory of people as a collective construction and as a personal construction of each individual. A construction packed with connotations, meanings, with significance for each one of its visitors who associate its nooks, trees, views, fragrances, simple stones to special moments in their lives.