With Kengo Kuma & Associates

Wavy and textured unity

Year: 2018

Size: 22000m²

Type:International Competition, 1st prize

"The new roof materiality, although with an innovative design, refers both to the memory of local construction and also, in its form, to a large light levitating membrane, with a subtle reference to a textile plasticity as an evocation of the great strength of this industry in the region." 

The Matadouro Industrial of Porto, surrounded by inherited industrial and residential uses resulting from successive transformations and urban amputations, nowadays regulates functional hesitations at low level and visual impasses at high level. Devalued with the implementation of internal city motor-way (VCI), the schism with the Dragão Stadium and the Metro is overcome through a crossing bridge with an impactful design morphology, that allows an extended overview on the former slaughterhouse and the Campanhã valley. The functional miscegenation of the bodies that made up the old Matadouro is unified by the head of access and the described crossing. The modelled and perforated roof adds the existing diversity and complexity with a shaded unit and conformity that covers the voids between volumes. 

"Here, what matters is what Matadouro will give to the city. A new typology of covered outdoor spaces, an urban system of walkways, with streets and squares joining a series of buildings. The trigger for all this, what captivates us most, is to question the rehabilitation, not of one or more buildings, but to make and create a more ambitious system that integrates something broader and which is the city." 

A common public identity is generated between sides of the city, through a social and cultural programmatic integration. Apparently wavy and textured by Antoni Gaudí, it is ascending or descending according to the topography and gives back the city its lost scale. Instrumentally transforming in the social and cultural universe, it constitutes a regenerative act of a socially decadent and economically needy territory. Aside from the main installed services, recreational and educational uses are proposed, in addition to museological features of evocation and allocation of the place. Both ambitious and audacious, this project seeks to transform the narrative on conservation and transformation in the city giving the area of Campanhã an opportunity to use this as a benchmark for future developments.

"For the Matadouro project in Porto we tried to create a new type of public space. For this kind of project, the most important thing is the warmness of the space, therefore we tried to use the ceramic roof tiles as they very much relate to the complexity of the city. By using the material, we tried to create a warmness and a liveliness." Kengo Kuma