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Defence Launches “Contest of Ideas” for the Old Lancer’s Regiment Building
17 April 2018
The “Defence campus” project, whose timetable remains undefined, will be financed by revenues from the sale of property owned by the Defence Ministry.
The Minister of National Defense will launch a “contest of ideas” in the next few days for the rehabilitation of the old Lancers nº2 Regiment building in Calçada da Ajuda, Lisbon, with the aim of transferring the Ministry’s operations there.
The project for a “Campus of Defense”, whose timetable remains undefined, will be financed by revenues from the sale of property owned by the Defence Ministry, so that “as far as possible it [will be] a budget neutral operation,” Minister Azeredo Lopes said this Tuesday.
“[We believe] that the jury can meet quickly and, I hope, launch a contest of ideas in the coming days,” Mr Lopes stated, as he invited “all the country’s architects” to participate and stressed the “opening of the project to civil society,” together with its connection to the history and heritage of the city.
The jury will be composed of 11 members and will be chaired by the lawyer Artur Santos Silva, who was president of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation between 2012 and 2017 and also presided over BPI, among other positions.
Minister Lopes also emphasised that the building in Restelo where the Ministry of Defence is currently located, “is losing functional capacity over time and is quite challenging to manage.”
The project’s implementation and the transfer of services from the Ministry of Defence to the Lancer’s regiment facility will only occur in “a few years,” Mr Lopes said. The minister also added that he hopes to benefit from the future “Defence campus”, no longer as a minister but as a citizen.
The presentation of the project took place on the premises of the Lancers nº two regimental building, in Calçada da Ajuda, with the participation of the mayor of Lisbon, Fernando Medina, and the Minister of Culture, Luís Castro Mendes.
“Bringing a new life back to an old building, recreating it without disfiguring it but adapting it to new organisational needs, particularly at the level of the most modern technologies and the criteria of energy efficiency and ecological sustainability, is one of the best ways to guarantee its existence,” Mr Lopes argued.
The mayor of Lisbon, Fernando Medina, believes that the Defence Ministry’s proposal was the “first realistic and possible solution” for the area that has been vacant since September 2015, when the Lancers Regiment was transferred to Amadora.
Original Story: Público / Lusa
Photo: Lusa / Antônio Cotrim
Translation: Richard Turner