Ricerc@Sapienza

After the mid-19th century, the increasing production linked to the country industrialization process, led to a substantial transformation of the Tagus river bank in Lisbon, restricting public accessibility and, indeed, turning the city away from its river. At the end of the 19th century, moreover, the construction of the coastal railway directed to Cascais definitively cut off any last relationship with the riverfront for the entire western half of the city. The most significant two urban redevelopment projects recently completed in Belém neighborhood have taken the burden to link—however only in single points—the historic buildings along the Rua da Junqueira with the riverfront, through cycle-pedestrian paths that overpass both the railway and the fast-flowing roads. Though with very different approaches and languages, aware of building pieces of a broader and more articulated “architecture of the city,” Paulo Mendes da Rocha’s Museu dos Coches and Amanda Levete’s Museu de Arte, Arquitetura e Tecnologia first of all have intended to convert former industrial areas, fenced and inaccessible plots, previously forgotten places, into new public spaces merged with the city.