Lota de Aveiro

Description

A unique place, located in the middle of the lagoon context with privileged proximity to the city, the area of the old fish market (Antiga Lota) marks the first moment of contact by the water with the city of Aveiro. Affirming itself as the culmination of an urban qualification policy, completing the structuring axis “Aveiro Train Station > Avenida Lourenço Peixinho > Rossio de Aveiro > Antiga Lota”, the intervention proposal is defined in three main moments: affirmation of the natural system, urban continuity and public space, and the anchoring to the history of Aveiro.

The landscape as a structuring entity of space – Through a primarily landscape oriented intervention proposal, a logic of continuity with the surrounding natural systems is promoted, through the extension of the main landscape units and structuring lines of the nearby context. The renaturalization of the Lota Peninsula is proposed, qualifying a space that is currently vacant and abandoned, returning it to the natural domain.

Urban continuity and public space – Implemented as a consequence of the landscape matrix structure, it is intended that the proposed buildings for the area of Antiga Lota extend a certain way of building the city, approaching the land structure, morphology and scale of the buildings and blocks of the nearby Bairro da Beira-Mar. In terms of public space, it is proposed to inscribe the intervention in a principle of continuity with the requalification of Largo do Rossio and Avenida Lourenço Peixinho, seeking to give cohesion to a certain lexicon of materiality and design of the public space that the city has been developing.

Anchoring to the history of Aveiro – The abandoned fish market building and the fishing nets warehouse, built in the 50s and 60s of the last century, are the two remaining structures from the old Lota that define, together with the ruins of the Capela de São João do Rossio, recently rediscovered, built examples of how the city of Aveiro was built in different periods of the last centuries, in lagoon and marine territory. The rehabilitation of the buildings of the Fish Market and Fishing Nets Warehouse, in addition to the restoration of the Chapel of São João do Rossio, aim to highlight the unique elements of the relationship between Aveiro’s history and water related activities. These buildings, suitably rehabilitated for their new functions, will come to define the urban planning principles that organize the new, wider urban settlement.