Palácio Marquês de Abrantes: Design Project Submission

This process began in 2015 when we first entered the Palace, and whose pre-project phase occurred over this last year and involved institutions and residents from the Rua de Marvila area. It implied a physical change in our professional practice, as we moved to the Palace where we developed our design practice.

We have collected from this area and from the Palace itself a countless number of success stories. We worked closely with people and the Sociedade 3 de Agosto; assisted in the relocation of the Fruta Feia distribution point of Marvila to the Palace, and found at the Sociedade 3 de Agosto restaurant a partner, a refuge, and a family.
However, it is also good to leave it written that keeping activity open in an unoccupied and vacant building is not the paradise you suggested in the photographs. It does not escape our memory, the days when it was not possible to work because there was no electricity, the permanent tensions caused by the inflow of rainwater, the attempt to keep all the windows closed, and the intrusions we faced. We believe that we played an important role in the preservation of public heritage during our time here, with direct contact and the support of the Municipal Directorate of Maintenance and Conservation - Department of Municipal Housing (DHM).
On our part, this was a process in which we experienced and learned a lot from a professional standpoint.

From an international perspective, this process gained a relevance that we did not expect. The construction of the local office was distinguished as one of the 40 finalists/shortlisted works of the European Union Contemporary Architecture Prize - Mies Van Der Rohe 2022, the process was selected by the Mediterranean City-to-City Migration Project of UCLG - Committee on Social Inclusion, Participatory Democracy and Human Rights. We were referred to and referenced in various locations, conferences, awards, and publications.

As we have not yet been informed whether the process that we carried out will be able to continue, it seems clear to us that the building has gained a public character, and an open territorial relevance, making it hard to justify the path to which it was confined to in 2017, that of a public auction.
However, we are also aware that the absence of answers and measures will lead to its habitability conditions being degraded and causing the institutions that occupy it to give up.
What seems clear to us is that a public building of this relevance should never be closed and, even in the process of rehabilitation or discussion about its possible use, it should be used until its last day, serving people and institutions. This has the immeasurable advantage of guaranteeing the security of the building, at no cost to the public, during which preservation and maintenance of the building will occur.
Furthermore, it seems to us that a participatory process on the ruin of a vacant building, closed and guarded by a security company will always have other results and different involvement from populations and local entities. Today, the neighbourhood talks about the Palácio Marquês de Abrantes as one of their facilities, which they were able to visit over the years and on which they were called on to think and express their opinion.
We have and continue to have all the desire and interest in continuing to develop this process until the day the rehabilitation works of the Palace start, however, for now, we have begun our process of moving to another location, of which we will write about soon.

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