Proap

Whereas the project consists of various programmes, in essence, it is divided into a green part, where park-like structures meet the street and adjacent buildings. The outstanding part of it is a paved dike that protects the city from the river when it floods. The dike is entirely designed as an open public space, built of cobblestone. A playful folding of polygons ensures a vast open space and a unique landscape experience. In times of high waters, the visitors will be able to observe the flooding of the riverbank and the consequent frolics between the river and the newly established topography.

The project aims to emphasise a historic landscape by rendering it visible. It is a linear path in the shape of a hexagon, a little over 1 km long. The jury recognized the intelligent and sensible use of stone slabs as the unifying element that connects this landscape into perception. The intervention focuses on one task, it appears unconcerned with stacking other programme on its path. It is precisely this decision that amplifies the experience of the linear landscape, achieving more with less. The unified dimensions of the stones along the path offer a scale for measuring and enhanced sensing of the changes in the landscape. It is a powerful ‘one-liner’ project that affects the experience of the entire immediate landscape.

The Tejo and Trancão Park covers about 90 hectares on the right bank of the Tejo River, from the Vasco da Gama Tower, located on the southern border of the park, to the Trancão River, which forms its northern boundary, encompassing the EXPO’98 intervention area. The intervention area was characterized by a set of deeply […]

The design of the CUF hospital and its open spaces was immediately born out of an ongoing dialogue between the architect and the landscape architect. It is therefore natural that the result of the landscape architecture project intervenes on the hospital’s open spaces by interpreting them as an extension of the buildings themselves. The planting […]

Amplitude is the first word that comes to mind upon initial observation of the project site, with its striking continuity between the mountainous landscape, the vast agricultural fields and the meandering river which culminates in a lake as ample as a sea and unveils a distant horizon line to the north. The real protagonist, and […]

Alqueva dams the Guadiana river and two of its aflluents; it was designed to alleviate the water shortage problem in the Alentejo region and in this way revitalise agricultural activity in the region. Although it also contributes to energy production, it constitutes the main point of a vast water distribution system, both for public supply […]

The general coordinator of PROAP is João Nunes, born in Lisbon in 1960. Graduated in Landscape Architecture from Instituto Superior de Agronomia da Universidade Técnica de Lisboa, Master in Landscape Architecture from Escuela Tècnica Superior de Arquitectura de Barcellona, Universitá Politecnica di Catalunya. As International Director is responsible for the strategic, executive and tactical leadership […]