Urban Ensemble of Avenida Infante Santo

This project — resulting from the development of the land that took place with the inauguration of Avenida Infante Santo — put into practice the principles of urban planning manifested in the Athens Charter, in 1933, which, replacing the classic urban block and avenue system, advocates the model of an aerated city, filled with tall buildings. This ensemble of five housing blocks standing on pilotis, isolated, sun oriented and perpendicular to the avenue was designed with the premise of adapting that ideal city model to Lisbon’s reality. Its morphology and the way it employs the potentialities of concrete are parallel to Le Corbusier’s “5 points of architecture”. Between the blocks, there is an emphasis on clear, traversable spaces, allowing for continuity between green and leisure areas. Also remarkable is the way the project integrated the collaboration of several artists, for example with the interventions of Vieira da Silva and Jorge Vieira in the tile coatings of the store fronts. In 1956, it is awarded with the Municipal Architecture Prize, which, under the regulation, was granted to only one of the blocks, although noting the “architectonic value of the urban ensemble itself”.