Laboratório Urbano. O acontecimento como ativação do espaço público

Abstract

In the past decades, public space has lost its prominence in the city as a place to meet and enjoy collectively and communally, because of the constant social and technological changes that have taken place. However, there has been an increasing number of urban regeneration initiatives, which do not always have a significant impact on urban daily life. In this way, this thesis investigates ephemeral happenings as tools for activating public space. Through the realization of three real context-specific experiences, it is investigated how this tyoe of interventions enhance the experience of public space, measuring how the user can be an agent of urban transformation, as well as on the role of the architect. The thesis is structured in three parts. In a first moment, the concepts inherent to the intervention in public space are exposed: is reflected the idea of happening, the agent that provokes it, and the city as a stage in which these interventions take place. Throughout the second part, Urban Laboratory, three experiments carried out in Torres Vedras are analysed, investigating different methods of intervention in the public space. In the last part, The City as a Collective Product, it is done a critical evaluation of the experiences carried out, assessing the relevance of ephemeral happenings as activation strategies. In practice, this research studies the real impact of different modes of activation of public space, contributing with the perspective of intervening in a small city, in which the last urban requalification projects executed were not catalysts of the expected transformation of the city.