Espaço Musas: licença para ocupar

Abstract

The contemporary city lives a revival of the historical claims of the Right to the City. The crisis of public space, supra controlled, and of private space, supra speculated, removed from the inhabitants the opportunity for expression in the built environment. Considering the city as common resource brings forward the proposal of collective spaces, which ensures the appropriation of the environment by those who participate in it. One of such spaces is Quinta Musas da Fontinha, a cultural and social project built around the idea of urban farming, born from the occupation of abandoned land inside the city block Alto da Fontinha. Here lies an approach to the history, context and specific processes of this collectively self-managed space, proposing an understanding of the physical space through its social space, and vice versa. The context of transformation of spatial and social morphology that is currently being felt in Porto, closely related to gentrification and speculation, poses a real threat to these forms of space production. After identifying the unique interstitial quality of the place of study, a proposal for the requalification of part of the city block is presented. This project serves the purpose of persistence and growth of the present form of occupation through the collectivization of the spaces today parceled, integrating them in the structural net of equipment of the city.