Macau, China

Nam Van Square

V.L.B Arquitectura E Planeamento, Francesca Carlotta Bruni, Manuel C. M. Vicente, Rui Leão

from Macau Government Information Bureau

Following the transition of Administration, from a Portuguese Colony into a Special Administrative Region of the PRC, the new government was confronted with the need for a new public square – with post-colonial connotations – both from a symbolic and a functional point of view: the historical main public space had become inadequate for a whole new range of public and collective agendas. It seemed clear to us that the intention and opportunity was to create a new FACT, symbolically neutral, even though loyal to the hybridism of the urban form that configured the City through the course of it’s history, and not to parasite on a Chinese or Palladian pastiche. The existence of a formal-functional round-about in the meeting of the two artificial lakes, was the chosen location, next to the new Macau Tower landmark: an abstract, modern and distinct icon par excellence, monumental and devoid of connotations to the past.

To design a square is to define a Place, before and furthermore than defining a Space. The Mediterranean tradition of Place making is seldom an act of imposition on the urban fabric, as testify most of Macau’s historical Public Spaces: the Square is in most cases, an accident in the fabric, denoting it’s poetic rationality in the almost casual play and manipulation of Geometry.

Geometry, detailing and the intertwining of levels were key elements in the search for a Place. The issue of scale was always about determining a base or floor for the imposing presence of the new Tower, which sits on the edge of a very narrow plot along the Pearl River arm that runs along Macau.

The main focus of the project was to gather without dilution, the Architectural dealing with very distinct confrontations: The water border; the creation of a place through the design of its immediate surroundings; the clipping of the sky; the laying down of a mass of floor that can accommodate the most multi-functional of programs; the separation without exclusion between car and pedestrian movements; the miscegenation between Square and Park typologies, to counter the constant and excessive density of all the built environment in this City. The Symbiotic relation of the Architectural Objects designed for the main Space, is a layering of intentions: The playfulness of the space when empty, makes it’s emptiness a visual paradox; they are spaces within a Space, rewarding monumentality to the Square; their relative positioning insinuates a fourth dimensionality that is discovered by traveling through them: The pattern of the Portuguese cobblestone flooring that defines the Square is a visual maze that constantly alters with the observers every movement.

Urban Park on a Traffic Node

The Urban Park was commissioned two years after the Square, as a simple landscaping of the access areas of the new bridge to the outlying islands, in an adjoining stretch of causeway. The site’s confrontations and situation had far a greater potential than that of a mere landscaping solution.

The project organizes two different park areas along the two waterfronts, each finding a design pattern to divorce itself from the closeness of the roads: On the lakeside, a sloping scenic garden with levels of water pools overlooks the city and “transforms” the over imposing macro-presence of the bridge as a framer of views. On the riverside, a children playground stretches along the water, as if like an Indian fairytale palace.

Europaconcorsi Beta

Nam Van Square