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Quinta da Gruta
Detail Plan
Maia, Portugal
1998-2001
The portion of the territory where the Quinta da Gruta Estate is located, correctly designated as the centre of the village of Castêlo da Maia, could be characterized, until relatively recent times, by a special organization marked by the polarization caused by the national road (E.N. 14) and the train tracks, both axis of national importance that cross it in the north-south direction, and by the many crossings in the east-west direction, that articulate it with the remaining council area.
This situation provoked the concentration of some services in this area, maybe in the sequence of time where the council buildings were located here, contributing in this way to the affirmation of centrality, even though it was unwise.
Recent and present times are times of deep and accelerated transformation, marked by the strong real-estate pressure.
The disconnection verified in recent buildings not only between them, but particularly in their relation with pre-existing buildings, reveals an obvious difficulty in articulating the different types of occupation, what limits its capacity to generate public space, also almost completely abolishes the tenuous centrality that un a way still characterizes this portion of the territory.
Rediscovering that centrality, endowing it with an obvious urban sense as a way of affirming it in the territory that the theme the study proposes to look into/meet/face.
The pretext is the reformulation of the Estate, as a space of leisure, in the sense of transforming it in an “almost building”, whose scale cannot limit itself to its specific location but on the contrary, should establish itself, from a wider territory, so to affirm its true public dimension as a potentially structured element of this same territory.
It is intended to make that centrality seem present, contemporary, but doing so, without renouncing its rural memory, it has to be capable of reinterpreting those aspects that still survive and deserve to be kept/maintained.
We are not dealing with any type of nostalgia, quite the opposite, we are dealing with securing an equilibrium that even precarious, allows a transformation – a dialogue between distinctive construction periods, between new and old, between big and small, between public and private.
The strategical approach, this way defined should not impose itself, it should not be exterior to the territory, but on the contrary, should establish itself from it.
