Porto is going through immense changes in the recent years. Baixa, downtown, a vast urban areas that was largely vacant of both residents and business only a decade ago, and now bustles with international visitors and urban rehabilitation projects. In this intense process of gentrification, the original population has suffered. On the one hand, the old inhabitants who has been renting are pressured to leave and make way to the new populations who fancy life downtown. On the other hand, the problems that made the population leave in past decades prevail – namely, insufficiency of services for the local community. 

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All these processes have led us to rethink one block of the city in a way that creates favorable conditions to its daily use. We are looking at what we call “the Fontinha Block” - a combination of modest scale streets between Gonçalo Cristovão Road and Constituição Road.

 

The fontinha block is part of Baixa, and, at the same time, an enclave that have escaped the urban processes that the rest of Baixa was subjected to. It was forgotten, perhaps, “saved” mainly due to its intense topography, that forced past urban planning to neglect or bypass. We see the block, with its vast empty lots, an opportunity to create programs that target the people of the city, building a Social Fabric. It offers an opportunity to redesign new connections bridging the discontinuance of paths that we find currently, mainly expressed by the south-north barrier of Gonçalo Cristovão Road. 

 

Programmatically, we aim to creating a network of social-services and public spaces designed to improve the quality of life of the city-center’s inhabitants. As part of our strategy, we will address issues of circulation and public transportation, particularly the Metro Stations, highlighting connectivity on the metropolitan scale to sustainability of the programs we will develop.