Car parks, Lisbon

What started as a provocative curatorial project within ExperimentaDesign, the Lisbon Biennial of design culture, has suddenly acquired political potential for the Portuguese capital. In 2002, the city of Lisbon launched its own programme for much-needed multi-storey car parks in the inner city. The sneak previews it released suggested that better solutions could be devised. Consequently, nine young architects from Lisbon were selected and challenged to think creatively about this hot topic for Voyager, a travelling exhibition showcasing the work of a new generation of Portuguese designers. Four of the architects who responded to the initial call-for-concepts were subsequently selected by the curators and invited by the Lisbon city authorities to develop their ideas further. These new proposals try for low budget construction, while promoting mixed-use programmes and special interventions that humanize the necessary evil of inner-city car parks.

S'A Arquitectos kept their green facades, but adapted them sensitively to the site, a cherished sightseeing spot in one of the oldest districts of Lisbon. Their project extends the existing platform and creates new urban connections.

E-studio adapted an old modernist market place. Their proposal includes a top-floor restaurant and cultural spaces. The electronic colour system in the facade will turn it into a playful urban backdrop.

CVDB Arquitectos takes advantage of a difficult round site and combines parking areas, public space and housing behind a gauze-like facade.

a.s*, atelier de santos, faced a site with lots of infrastructure and a particularly hard job: how to transform their clever and beautiful pre-fabricated concrete slabs into a feasible project?

The very fact that this surprising urban development project has reached this stage is worthy of a great deal of praise, especially in a culture permanently divided between generic architecture and the mandatory use of high profile Portuguese architectural talent. Unfortunately not everything has been smooth sailing. Bureaucratic procedures, regeneration strategies and business models developed by the company leading the whole process may still endanger the overall project. Cheapness at all costs may prove the death knell of this novel curatorial urban intervention.