Resume: The project sought to contribute to the study of the conceptual and methodological evolution of realized plans and to the knowledge of the influences established between Portugal and colonies.
The underlying main idea is the construction of a reference framework for the design of waterfronts adapted to climate change effects from sea-level rise models, addressing an urban space typology that plays a lead role in the mediation between city and sea: Portuguese Atlantic Seashore Streets.
The Portuguese coast has about 943 km in mainland Portugal, 667 km in the Azores and 250 km in Madeira, totalling an Atlantic margin with more than 1800 km. Numerous coastal towns and villages dot this line of mediation between land and water, which defines and limits one side of the coastal belt where 80% of the Portuguese population lives.
In these urban fabrics, the relation with the sea is structuring from the primordial choice of the founding site of each settlement and the lead role of streets, avenues and seashore drives in the conformation of the articulation line between the city and the water is easily recognized. The relation with the site, the periods of formation and transformation and the dynamics of the occupation and use may explain the acknowledged morphological diversity of these urban elements.
In the current context in which climate change promotes a gradual but inevitable sea-level rise, it is essential to know the diversity of this type of urban element - the seashore street - as well as to develop extreme flood models in order to define measures and design their adaptation to climate change, coordinated both with the cultural heritage of the urban spaces and the needs and aspirations of the populations, who understand them as irreplaceable references both in their daily lives and as representation stages of the exceptional events of society.
The convergence of research units of the University of Lisbon on urban morphology, led by formaurbis LAB (CIAUD/FAUL), and on climate change, led by CCIAM and IDL (FCiências.ID), allow stemming from the morphological knowledge on the origin, evolution and current state of the diversity of Portuguese Atlantic Seashore Streets, for the design of innovative solutions of adaptation measures and pathways to an expected and urgent scenario of sea-level rising.
The research unfolds into 5 phases: 1) interpretative reading of Portuguese Seashore Streets through the elaboration of a Morphological Inventory of the diversity of cases; 2) elaboration of sea-level rise scenarios through flood mapping for sea-level rise coupled with storm-surge events; 3) definition of participatory adaptation pathways for long-term solutions in climate change scenarios; 4) research by design of urban and architectural answers on future scenarios materializing sea-level rise adaptation measures in academic projects; 5) research dissemination through an itinerant exhibition, a synthesis book and a closing seminar.
Thus it is created the essential reference framework for the design of these significant and vulnerable spaces that mediate city and sea, based on their memory and on the adaptation to an inevitable becoming.
