domingo, 5 de junho de 2011

A little Garden in Rua da Graca

Location

The site which I propose is located in Graca, one of the oldest quartiers of Lisbon, just along Rua da Graca, on the right side of the road, coming from the main square.




The Site

This space is difficult to be defined : it could be a little square or a garden;

it has an irregular shape, and it is enclosed in all the sides by a wall about one meter high.

In the middle of the space there are three little trees, and along one of the four sides’ wall runs a seat in cement.


Despite Rua da Graca is a very busy street, always full of people, every time I walked by this square, I have never seen anybody there.

It is not a space which invites you to enter it, whose presence is not felt on the road, but reather it remains on the side, almost hidden.


I think that this space has many qualities but for many reasons it doesn’t work;

Among the major problems are : the choice of the wrong materials, the neglect of the place, and the wall itself which encloses the space.







Inquiry


Before considering any proposal about how to change this space, I thought it was right to ask the locals, which was their opinion about this square.

For this reason, I made ​​a survey to identify which are the needs of the residents, and how they could immagine this little square to be.

From this Survey the following opinions and suggestions came out (which I reproduced in the diagram below).

The main requires in order to improve this space seem to be:

- To increase the green

- To destroy or at least paint the walls that surround the space

These are the two main priorities.









The project


The first part of the project is been readymade: a few weeks after my inquiry, I went up to Graca and the wall that was facing the street was demolished.

So one of the three main demands was already realised;

For this reason I decided to work on the other two requests, which were to repaint the walls and to increase the green.

My intervention tries to act both on the walls as well as on the floor.

The project consists in repainting the wall on the right side of the square, and to create a structure where it could be possible to grow climbing plants on the wall at the end of the square.

I also decided to remove some of the paving slabs (which have a module of 600 x 400 mm) and replace that module with grass or flowers.






Existing Plan



Proposal Plan





Sistem of replacing the paving slabs

with grass and flowers





Final Proposal

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