Braço de Prata Will Soon Host One of the Largest Gardens in Lisbon

13 January 2018

The public park is being built in front of the project that Renzo Piano designed in 1998. The plan provides for grassy areas, a bike path, esplanades and even a library.

An extensive project focused on the Braço de Prata has been in the works for twenty years, but only recently has the construction of the 499 apartments been resumed, resulting in significant changes to roads and traffic flows in eastern Lisbon. The Parque Ribeirinho Oriente, an almost-90,000-square-meter park is soon to take shape alongside the privately-funded development (recently estimated at around 450 million euros).

At the end of December, the city council awarded the contract for the construction of the first phase of the park. The works will begin in front of the site of the twelve planned residential buildings that were designed in 1998 by the Italian architect Renzo Piano, and which are currently being erected. The development is also expected to be extended, at an as yet unascertained date, to Matinha. The park will include a stretch of land  along the waterfront measuring 1.3 kilometres, from the Poço do Bispo dock to the Parque das Nações marina, which will also be the focus of construction works.

The landscape architects Filipa Cardoso de Menezes and Catarina Assis Pacheco, whose f/c atelier’s submission won a design contest two years ago, provides for large grassy areas, a bike path, a maintenance track, esplanades and even a library. But the park’s descriptive document states that above all, the project intends to take advantage of the “primordial symbiosis between the city and the Tagus.” In the past, the area was primarily industrial, together with a port. That is why the project will maintain “the pontoons, some warehouses and elements from the old railway line” – which will be transformed into a maintenance circuit “including interactive sculptural elements along its length.”

Intending to keep references to the original port, the designers are proposing that the various facilities (cafes, bathrooms, library, bicycle rental spaces) will come from the “conversion of maritime containers” that are scattered throughout the garden. “As you cross the park to the north, there are various environments, some of a more active nature, equipped with facilities of some sort, others simpler and relaxed, aimed at contemplation and rest,” says the descriptive document.

The first public tender for the design of this park was launched in 2015 but was eventually cancelled. A new contest followed, in which Renzo Piano was one of the jurors. The proposal of the town councillor who headed the park’s project and planning expressed the intent to “rescue” the area “for the general public’s enjoyment.” The garden was initially expected to open sometime in 2016, but Manuel Salgado estimated last year that the inauguration would occur in the spring of 2018. This date is already looking highly unlikely: the first phase of construction is expected to take eight months.

The second phase, which will cover an area of almost 43,000 square meters, will then follow. This stage of the project is associated with the start-up of the urban operations provided for in Matinha’s Detail Plan, which is expected to change the face of that area of the city radically. The project includes plans for the park to “receive an extensive informal sports area, a revitalized warehouse nucleus and an area that is primarily playful and contemplative, centred on a large lake and an amphitheatre that merges further along with the Matinha Interior Park and will include a system of panoramic benches that will be installed along the pier of the Parque das Nações’ marina.

In total, €3.85 million has been budgeted for the construction works.

Original Story: Público – João Pedro Pincha

Translation: Richard Turner