Category Urban - architectural

Location Santo Tirso, Marketplace Area

Population 27,000 inhab.

Strategic site 40.3 ha - Project site 3.4 ha

Site proposed by Santo Tirso Municipality

Owner(s) of the site Santo Tirso Municipality

Commision after competition architectural project; redesign of public space

Team representative architect - urban planner

How can the site contribute to the adaptable city?

The Project Area of Santo Tirso site is near the Town Center and the City Hall. The Municipal Market has been losing the role it once held in the populations’ everyday life, due to changes occurring in commercial retail offer. However, having into account the strategic location and the recognition of its importance in urban and social fabric, it is important to counteract the current abandon trend, through a commitment to a more comprehensive adaptive strategy that relates the marketplace and its contiguous public space, with city areas that offer diverse use and contribute to new possibilities for urban vitality and centrality.

City strategy

The goal to turn Santo Tirso more attractive and competitive as an urban center at a regional scale includes the demand for an increasing accessibility and the promotion of its architectural and environmental quality values. Contribution for this strategy comes from strengthening interventions that connect the civic and administrative center to the riverside system, through the regeneration of both Ave River margins and Ribeiro do Matadouro Urban Park (Europan 9 competition project area). Ongoing projects focus on urban regeneration issues, in relation to built heritage, and strengthening of central urban functions and public spaces’ improvement, connected to leisure and smooth mobility solutions.

Site definition

Santo Tirso is part of the Oporto metropolitan area, a dispersed conurbation. It is a medium-sized town, with a peripheral area scattered along the Ave River Valley, where industries, agriculture and infrastructure mix. The project area is defined by the Municipal Market and its surrounding area. that together with the Town Hall defines the towns’ central urban axis. The main goal is the revitalization by expansion of activities in the center, around the market and close surroundings. Project area is in articulation with a broader area, where the aim is to explore different uses, through links connecting it to the riverside by soft circulation modes, and enhancing landscape with scenic qualities.

Future of the site in relation to the site family and to Adaptability

The main trigger element of the process is the adaptation of the municipal market to a new management process. The city looks for an innovative image and a new functional concept foreseeing a mix of uses for the Town center, both with permanent activities (within the building) and temporary, with additional events to the Monday’s fair existing today (around the building and the outdoor area), and other temporary concepts for generating new possibilities (restaurants, nightlife, workshops), with promotion/intensification of urban experiences in shopping streets that cross the market area amplified by the possible use of new routes within passages through accessible blocks by adapting the site to a commercially and culturally live reality, with new network inputs. These new inputs must allow stronger attraction of a larger area to the Town center, namely by better connections to the riverside.