Water, Time and Ruin

Margueira docks, a bustling shipyard by the Tejo River, is now an abandoned industrial ruin that separates the city from the riverfront. Project purpose is to restore urban significance to the site, by adapting the place to contemporary challenges such as flooding due to rising sea levels and by interweaving the urban agglomerations with the riverside.The tabula plena design process embraces a poetic re-appropriation of the industrial ruins, introducing new architectural forms into the empty nave: modular elements, housing residences and ateliers, facilitate an evolving transformation.

Water, Time and ruin. The emotional reconstruction of the Margueira docks is, metaphorically, a navigation along the coast, guided by nautical portolans and charts, crafted to rethink a boundary territory and transform it into a threshold between water and land. The project reimagines Margueira, a historic shipyard on the Tejo River, with the aim of restoring its connection with the city and the riverfront; where Water, Time, and Ruin meet. The project is divided into three areas of intervention, each exploring different spatial scales. At the territorial scale, the connection between Cova da Piedade, perched on a steep hill, and Cacilhas along the river is redefined. A building along the hillside accommodates urban transport functions, bridging the two areas and encouraging land to water connection. On the urban scale, the industrial area, including the docks and quays, is redesigned: the former shipyard houses new platforms for docking boats, creating new appropriation opportunities from water to land. On an architectural scale, the empty industrial ruins accommodate modular elements, designed for housing and ateliers, flexible to house different functions over time. Concrete, wood, and steel have been chosen to define the materiality of the project, aiming to establish a dialogue between the historical ruins and the contemporary architectural interventions, highlighting their transformation in continuity: preserving the memory of the site while embracing its future.