Monte da Lapa – Arquitetura de Álvaro Siza Vieira

A Unique Álvaro Siza Project

Monte da Lapa is a "synthesis place" in Porto's urban fabric. Situated between downtown Porto and its western expansion, this promontory rivals the scale of the beautiful homonymous church emerging in the surrounding urban profile.

As the promoter of the development, Atelier Pedra Líquida commissioned this rehabilitation project from architect Álvaro Siza, knowing that no one else would respect this urban ensemble in its various scales and memories as he would.

Despite the historical distance, Siza evokes here the 1970s when Porto’s “islands” became a working theme of local architectural culture, maintaining the same desire as before to preserve, reveal, and transform them into dignified urban fronts.

The programme includes the construction of a new building—a tourist inn with six rooms—but mainly the rehabilitation of an old mill-belvedere for commercial and leisure space, as well as various housing nuclei: student residence and houses for short, medium, and long-term rental, among which some of the former residents are settled.

Siza reinvents the history of this lofty place by connecting platforms and streets, thus creating a new urban circuit that “de-ghettoises” these hard-to-reach areas. However, he never offers us the total landscape; instead, he compels us to make our effort of climbing and resting between ramps, stairways, and walls a special moment of city discovery.