The evolution of the city of Porto during the last century and in the first two thousand years, has happened mainly towards the sea, that is in direction west regarding the historical center. In the last two decades, the interest of foreign funding has brought attention to the historic center by changing the town planning. This has returned to be the focal point of Porto whose extension has changed from transverse to axial. As a result, the pre-existing road ring found itself imprisoned in the urban network, becoming a scar inside the city fabric and a morphological barrier for communication and extension between the inside and outside of the city. This ring road called VCI is a high-speed road designed during the last century when the development forecasts of the city were different, and today instead finds itself splitting the city into two parts, separating the center from the rest. The VCI is a fundamental element for the north-south connection of the country and as a motorway with intersections at staggered levels has been designed at a distance that does not respect the floor of the city. Its share varies a lot during the journey and only on a few occasions is the same share of the city. Moreover the city of Porto suffers from a serious lack of greenery because the urbanization prior to the latest developments has realized the city park in the west towards the sea, as the development of the city in that sense was expected. Today all the hypothetical sites for the design of new green areas are located near the VCI that blocks their exploitation. Many of these are fragmented along the VCI as they are spaces of results born from a poorly urbanization of the space adjacent to the road. My design hypothesis is to intervene by modifying the layout of the VCI while maintaining its national function as a connecting element between the north and the south of the state and solve the relationship between the center of Porto and the north of the city, creating areas of interest that further improve this transition. The two main motorway tributaries that connect the north with the south of the country are the A28 and the A3 that connect to the VCI respectively to the Francos node and in a unique motorway junction near the barrio of Outerio. The pseudo-horizontal connection between these two nodes is the only portion of the motorway that only serves as a road ring. The design idea is to transform this connection into an urban road with crossroads, which solves the urban fabric and recovers these green spaces fragmented along the track. This high-speed transversal function can be achieved to the north of the city, away from the town, by an existing motorway connection similar to the one removed, the A4. The concept of intervention is to reinterpret this scar while maintaining its artificial morphology or treating it as a natural element such as the riverbed. Working on the banks of this as if they were banks with the construction of an urban road for part whose task is to first recreate the urban fabric of their shore and then connect with each other reusing the existing bridges. In this proposal the river bed is a long green corridor that sews the various spaces resulting in a single large vertical park with pedestrian cycle path. The relationship between the two roads and the route follows a principle of isolation of the green that takes advantage where possible the difference in altitude and when this is canceled is the path to take advantage of the new green spaces to get away from the road.Within the masterplan there are 5 highlights: The construction of a festival park; given the perfect location on the outskirts of the city with a direct connection to the airport, would give the city the opportunity to eliminate the problems of disturbance of the public peace as the park is located at the end of the industrial zone. Nowadays with the relocation of the industry these plants are almost abandoned and an investment in this could bring attention to the area. The realization of an industrial district for factory 4.0; With the passage of time the relocation of industry has become increasingly common subject and given the increasingly search for proximity of the human being, that is the need to be able to get things always in the shortest time possible, bring the industry back into the city is fundamental. The construction of a residential neighborhood; For the design of a neighborhood within a former junction road I decided instead to connect the urban fabric of the four neighboring neighborhoods I decided to create a central fifth that is isolated from the latter through a barrier that allows for more to the route cycle-pedestrian to get away from the road. The masterplan is based on the concept of Rietvield’s hand where the palm would be a collective garden, fulcrum of the neighborhood and element of connection, while the fingers are the increasingly private transition of the space of man. It follows therefore the principle of the intermediate kingdom, City - group - house, all the plots follow a hierarchy of increasing privicy, from the large collective garden, to the most private one of any allotment to that of the house. All pedestrian paths within the neighborhood have different paths than those of the street.I believe that following the period of pandemic and the consequent need to stay more time at home, the quality of the spaces surrounding your home and the ability to reach points of interest as quickly as possible on foot has become fundamental. The realization of a new vision of museum; The museum is now locked within its principles as a space for many years and loses more and more interest over time. In a fully mechanized world, what is the constraint on the creation of a museum as an art factory? From this question comes the idea of a space of production, exhibition and artistic training; a modern Renaissance workshop on a large scale, where artists have all the necessary spaces to be able to breathe and live art, despite a imposed mechanism. The idea is to create a system of three buildings connected by an arm that plays for one sense the function of the path and for the other that of transport of the works from the production space to the exposure part passing through the training. A machine for art that lives the work as an element of mechanized production, that is, from the moment it is still raw material to the moment of sale.

A VISION FOR PORTO