DATE: 1988-1997 _______________________________________________ VISIT: Inside - Outside _______________________________________________ MORE DETAILS: The fire that deflagrated on the 25th of August of 1988 at the Chiado Warehouses (where a shopping Centre with the same name is now installed) marked, in a dramatic way, the decadence and the abandonment of Lisbon’s downtown.
The reconstruction plan was handed to Álvaro siza.
Between the option for rupture or continuity, the architect demonstrated that it was possible to create a city without opting for a forced affirmation of the new and different.
The reconstruction plan was set on a strategy of re-evaluation of public space, through the creation of new urban paths using the interior of the plots. A metro station was integrated and residencies were created as the revitalization and security factor of the area.
Regarding the design of the façades, the option fell upon the modulated repetition that retakes the typological concept of the Pombalino plan of the seventeen hundreds, by Eugénio dos Santos
The reconstruction managed to rescue the memory of the place. Nowadays, when we walk around Chiado, we have the perception of a city full of life that seems to have existed for years. _______________________________________________
