Labirinto sem paredes: Uma cobertura flutuante para a plataforma da Alfândega

Abstract

This dissertation is an architectural project for the platform of the Alfândega Nova in Porto. The Platform, located on the banks of the Douro River in the city of Porto, is an extensive embankment built over a former sandbank to support the Customs House building and the railway branch that served its activities - today transformed into a convention center and a parking lot. Since its construction, the site has been constantly occupied by machines, from trains to cars, becoming a boundary between the city and the Douro. The project seeks to reimagine this site as a place of encounters. Encounters between people, but also between people and the river, highlighting and privileging the main characteristics that make this site a singular space. The work begins with the most important text on the architectural typology of the platform: "Platforms and Plateaus: Ideas of a Danish Architect", by Jorn Utzon, published in 1962 in the magazine Zodiac. After presenting it, the first part borrows two central elements of his design thinking - platforms and floating roofs -, to organize a set of reference images, some architectural and others not, which accompanied the development of the proposed project. Each reference is accompanied by a short explanatory and analytical text. They are arranged in a way that privileges the narrative speculated here, and are presented as essential tools for the development of the project's vocabulary. In the second part, the Alfândega platform is introduced through a study of the evolution of its morphology, accompanied by archival documents and current photographs, identifying its main features that will be further developed in the project. The third part concentrates the drawings that manifest the project. Plans, sections, elevations, diagrams, and images present its overall panorama. The development of the dissertation reveals a design strategy that can be structured around references, place, and making. Compartmentalized, yet not disjointed. Each part maintains the coherence of its internal logic - stubbornly singular - yet still sharing the same field of the project.