Diploma 2025 - Lisbon, South Shore: the Estuary at the Centre

The Lisbon metropolitan area, created in 1991 and revised in 2003 and 2008, merged the Municipality of Lisbon with other surrounding areas into a new supra-municipal entity. To the north of the Tagus are the municipalities of Loures, Vila Franca de Xira, Odivelas, Amadora, Mafra, Sintra, Cascais and Oeiras; to the south, are Almada, Seixal, Barreiro, Montijo, Moita, Alcochete, Palmela, Sesimbra and Setúbal (these last three being the only ones without a view of the river). In this new context, the Tagus estuary (known as the Mar da Palha) is at the centre of the metropolitan area of Lisbon. Despite a territorial administration (comprising almost 3 million people in a territory covering some 2700 km 2 ) attentive to issues such as mobility, transport, economic and industrial strategy, in practice this huge space lacks management tools appropriate to its size. The recent dynamics of the Lisbon real-estate market – with quality offerings in terms of facilities, public spaces, and culture – have prompted a centrifugal movement of the population towards the more peripheral municipalities, so leading to a new, more polycentric metropolitan model. Earlier urban dynamics had drawn a very asymmetrical estuary, with a rich north bank, ennobled by “clean” activities, and a poor, industrial south bank with the dormitory suburbs for the capital. The recent decision to build the new airport at Alcochete may in future accentuate the already intense relations between the two shores, ensuring greater territorial cohesion. But today the two shores still remain far apart, divided by preconceptions and concrete inequalities, while the wonderful abandoned architecture and infrastructures along the south shore lie abandoned in the heart of an extensive area dominated by a park and a nature reserve. Giving a new significance to some twenty places, imagining a future that connects them to each other and to the city of Lisbon, is the challenge we propose for the 2025 Diploma.

The Diploma work lasts one semester and takes place in spring. In the autumn semester some teaching activities are scheduled, with lectures and encounters. In the following spring semester students will work distributed into 15 design studios, each directed by a full professor or visiting professor of Design, assisted by an architect collaborator. The number of students envisaged for each design studio will range between 8 and 12. The Diploma work deals with a single territory or city each year, proposed by the Diploma Director, while the specific design theme is chosen by the professor of each studio. 

In presence

The Diploma syllabus will entail:

Sem. I

• Choice of design studio
• Introductory meetings and lectures on the project theme
• Development of the basic materials

Sem. II

• Field trip to the project location
• Individual project work
• Personal critiques with the studio professor and assistant
• Intermediate critique with the studio professor, the Diploma Director and the Panel
• Meetings with professors of the different theoretical subjects
• Final critique with the studio professor, the Diploma Director and the whole Panel.

The Diploma board supplies a calendar and a program containing a list of all of the professors in charge of the studio sessions, the members of the Panel of Judges, the architect-collaborators, and students enrolled. It also shows the meetings scheduled with the teachers and guest speakers in the different interactive subject areas. The student will be admitted to the final critique only with the agreement of the professor of the design studio. For the students not admitted to the final critiques in June and for those engaged in recouping the necessary educational credits, the Diploma work will take place in the following spring semester.

Final critique with the studio professor, the Diploma Director and the whole Panel.