Campo Alegre Cidade: da sua longa metamorfose

Abstract

The object of the present thesis is the place Campo Alegre, in the city of Porto, detainer of a unique geographical and morphological situation and a privileged laboratory of urban design. The investigation aim to build knowledge that sheds light to its current urban form, informing its necessary contemporary project. It assumes the hypothesis that Campo Alegre's urban form results of a long metamorphosis process, accepting it has an origin, invariably, in something pre‑existing, that whenever it is transformed, maintains some invariants as characters of continuity. Thus, this thesis proposes a time regression exercise, mainly based on iconographic archival documentation analysed through (re)drawing. To communicate this approach, the thesis is structured in three themed chapters that clarify the nature of Campo Alegre's urban form, explaining the mains elements involved in its composition and synthesizing the principal themes rehearsed by the modern urban endeavours, and point out a perspective for the place's transformation in the future. Due to this practice, this thesis concludes that, today, Campo Alegre's complex and incomplete urban form is composed by the intersection of elements associated to the fundamental moments of its long transformation process. It identifies traces of the moments in which Campo Alegre is shaped from wilderness to city - its rural parcelling, idleness ambience, and of its residential condition - and is projected according to new urban ideals - residential expansion area and civic center; civic center; city park; civic, commercial and religious center with residence; business center; university center -, on the course of half a century of urbanization plans, elaborated by renowned architects, based on contemporary conceptual models. Looking ahead the future and underlining the need of Campo Alegre's understanding and resignification in today's city pattern, this thesis identifies the key urban and architectural themes in the definition of place and time, and proposes a set of guidelines that could inform or lead to a new Urban Project for Campo Alegre.