NOVA OEIRAS – THE PLAN FOR THE RESIDENTIAL NEIGHBOURHOOD

Cristino, on commenting modern urban planning at the time, stated that: “A Carta de Atenas chegou à conclusão de que se devia viver conjugando as necessidades funcionais com a vida salutar do campo. De maneira que trazendo o campo à cidade, através de amplos espaços verdes onde se vivia em blocos, grandes e espaçosos, sempre dando uma proporção de ar, de higiene, para que se pudesse viver ao sol, que Corbusier tanto amava.” (LCS, interview, 1971, to the magazine Arquitectura).

AS far as we know (which was confirmed by Gonçalo Ribeiro Telles, in Luís Cristino da Silva…, exhibition catalogue, FCG, 1998), Cristino “signed” the Nova Oeiras plan, gave it his name, will have intervened in its design and supervision; but its “concept” was that of Pedro Falcão e Cunha (a young architect and Cristino’s former student), who was called on by his master to, together with Ribeiro Telles, provide a service to a more enlightened customer who accepted building an obviously modern suburban area, without the need for compromising with past concepts in terms of design, construction, traditional urban planning or regional architecture design. We must praise Cristino for his vision to call on the right people for the job.

Nova Oeiras, whose low population density (today we could classify it as “luxury”); ample green spaces; ingenious and intelligent grading between the “garden-city” model of houses (rather extensive) and “large scale” main towers; its functional “neighbourhood unit” type of organization evidenced in its “shopping centre” at its core, with its side by side semidetatched blocks, towers and equipment, shows Cristino da Silva’s visionary perspective.

The pre-plan of the residential set (that of Quinta Grande in Oeiras, owned by Sociedade Nova Oeiras Limitada), whose design was by Cristino da Silva and Falcão e Cunha, was implemented in 1953 (as “Plan for the Nova Oeiras Residential Unit”) and approved in 1954; construction apparently was mostly carried out between 1958 and 1969 There is knowledge of a “Localization Plan” from 1960 which is very similar to that in the pre-plan, with the exception of the shopping centre’s more regular design and a different systems of footpaths (the final design is from 1961). The plan was changed/added to in 1962 (the year when the “Plan for the Nova Oeiras Residential Unit” is also known), 3 new towers are included, as well as a 20-storey tower, which is never built (1968-74). The plan suffered minor changes in the following decades, which did not change its essence (a tennis club in the 1980s, some green areas outside the landscaping project by Telles in the 1990s).

Nova Oeiras has also multi-family housing projects. The projects for the blocks date from 1958 to 1961 and were possibly designed by Falcão e Cunha. However, the three-fold design of the six ten-storey towers (whose author is not identified) constructed in the 1960s, remind us of the design of Areeiro tower, whose shape is also triangular. Furthermore, if we look at their grids, in along vertical line, the back stairways and the bright internal main stairwell “bomb”, these all remind us of the Areeiro tower. I should also mention that, in the interview I made as a student to Cristino in 1972, there was a model of that tower placed in evidence in his studio, in Avenida Pedro Álvares Cabral in Lisbon. Cristino will return to the ~concept of the tower in Nova Oeiras, when he makes a series of sketches for implementing the referred “monumental twenty-storey tower” at the northwestern top of the residential unit. Could this evidence his wish to finally take possession, through an impressive and monumental design, of a project that he never felt as his own?