Thomas Wing-Evans

lisbon garden

Lisbon is crumbling. Each decade, one hundred thousand residents leave due to high property prices. Empty buildings flank the streets of the Baixa Pombalina in a state of decay. Each morning, the city inflates as more than five hundred thousand people commute for work or tourism. For a few hours, Lisbon is an embodiment of city life. As dusk approaches, tourists flock to coaches and commuters to the metro. The districts fall silent and myriad abandoned buildings are revealed once more.

On the outskirts, communities marginalised by the population exodus exist as islands of self-reliance. Cova da Moura, a dense district formed predominantly by seven thousand postcolonial Cape Verdeans, practices urban agriculture as a means of offsetting the social, economic and cultural isolation brought about by the perception of the neighbourhood. Alleyways become vegetable gardens, motorway central reservations become planting beds, rooftops sprout exotic fruits. Limited public space is appropriated and cultivated, crammed with life and a sense of community absent from the empty city centre.

Lisbon has a long history of calamity and resilience. Radical self-reliance is also a contemporary phenomenon. Voids in the city centre are accumulating at an alarming rate. The combination of these components inspires an experimental pilot project, operating in equal measures as an agricultural programme and community cultivator.

Slotting into abandoned properties, the garden framework can spread across the city, re-purposing the existing fabric for community use. The sculptural central structure facilitates a vertical market garden, and cooled spaces at street level for sociable work. Decks captured under its canopy provide a spectrum of conditions for seasonal cultivation. Kitchens and larders transform some produce into edible supplies for today or various tomorrows.

www.thomaswingevans.co.uk

A planting programme is defined for the urban agricultural network

The sculptural framework is inserted into the existing envelope.

Pombaline floor plates are cut back and lined with reinforcement for horizontal allotments

Evapotranspiration is the sum of plant transpiration into the atmosphere. By encircling the atrium in vegetation, a column of cool air is created which passively regulates temperature.

Cool air generated by evapotranspiration spills out of the building through the ground floor marketplace, creating an urban oasis

Uncommon plants can be grown on the hot house floor through a combination of rooftop glazing and the urban heat island effect

The urban agricultural network expands to fill abandoned spaces within the city [hand drawn / gold leaf]