The aim of BioValue is to leverage transformative change in spatial policymaking, planning practices and infrastructure development. Doing so, it upscales opportunities for valuing biodiversity in support of EU strategic actions. Transformative change is a fundamental, system-wide reorganization across technological, economic and social factors, including paradigms, goals and values. Biodiversity loss is one of the persistent problems Europe is facing. But transformative change in spatial planning can help biodiversity to be better valued while developing new ways to reach sustainable development goals.

Spatial planning policy and decision-making take place at different levels, from local to global. Therefore, many are the players who can drive transformative change in spatial policy and planning processes – researchers, the public, policy makers, businesses and third sector organisations.

The project aims to safeguard and increase biodiversity by focusing on key steps of the mitigation hierarchy, addressing indirect drivers, renewed EU finance strategy within spatial planning, and better articulated instruments for mainstreaming biodiversity concerns into other sectors across different levels of governance.

To have access to the BioValue official website click here. https://biovalue-horizon.eu/project/

STREETS4ALL is a project funded by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT) led by the Instituto Superior Técnico – University of Lisbon and the University of Coimbra (Project Ref. PTDC/ECI-TRA/3120/2021). The project aims to evaluate how to allocate road space dynamically over time according to multi-modal and multi-functional street uses. Urban space is often underutilized. Traditional designs plan the road network to support maximum demand. While in peak hours, streets can be saturated, in non-peak hours, space is often idling.This space has been inequitably preferring motorized modes, in particular cars. Today, many cities target the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals by favoring people-centric planning after decades of car-centered planning.

The objective of the project includes proposing methodologies for site selection of equitable allocation of space, street design and technological solutions that can adapt its function and use equitably for all modes over time, according to some periodicity (e.g., an hour, few hours, or days) and at pre-timed periods (e.g., peak or off-peak, day or night time).

You can access the website of the project by clicking here.

“Siza Barroco” é um projecto de investigação que visa pôr em evidência a relação entre a ideia de Barroco e a obra de Álvaro Siza. O que com este projecto se pretende é, justamente, pôr à prova esta possibilidade interpretativa que, a nosso ver, trará ganhos de conhecimento consideráveis na compreensão: do método de projecto de Siza, do seu percurso ao longo do tempo, do metamorfosear da sua obra ao longo desse tempo e da própria metamorfose dos seus projectos. Cientes de que a colocação lado-a-lado da ideia de Barroco e da arquitectura de Álvaro Siza trará também ganhos de conhecimento do lado da revelação do que é afinal o Barroco, cremos, igualmente, que a investigação programada será uma ocasião particularmente fecunda para compreendermos mais e melhor o que tem sido descrito, com certa relutância do autor, enquanto “o génio de Siza”. Desdobrar – à maneira de Deleuze – a obra arquitectónica de Siza e procurar, primeiro, observá-la e, depois, dá-la a ver através de uma lente barroca é o objectivo primeiro e último da investigação proposta.

BRIDGE is an action-research project aimed at developing an approach to integrate different forms of knowledge and action in order to reduce wildifre risk. Local populations are not mere repositories of information from generalist information campaigns. Rather, they hold experiential knowledge that should be crosschecked with scientific information for a more detailed risk assessment. In the action plan, rural fire risk mitigation measures need to be incorporated into local governance logics and the daily routines of forest users.
At the methodological level, the development of this integrated approach will be implemented through a participatory-action research (PAR) applied to a specific territory, Monchique region. Participatory action research is understood as a process by which science and scientists, regional and local governance agencies, decision-makers and public officials, communities and local leaders cooperate with the dual objective of: i) assessing the vulnerabilities and resources of their territory; and ii) identifying the various risk reduction alternatives. This local involvement is a way to build knowledge with the community, raise wildfire risk awareness and foster a more enduring commitment with wildfire risk reduction policy. BRIDGE’s
participatory action research will be applied to a pre-selected pilot-area, Monchique region, and will comprise two major moments: one of participatory socio-territorial diagnosis and a local capacity-building process embodied in the form of a collaborative laboratory. The activities developed in the collaborative laboratory of BRIDGE (Innovation Lab for CBDRR) will be materialized through the adoption of collaborative methodologies, namely the participatory mapping. The involvement between local communities, local/regional technicians and scientists will occur through the construction of a local scaled map where relevant elements for wildfire risk management, such as socio-ecological vulnerabilities, local resources and capacities, will be identified. This map will subsequently be adapted to digital format so that it can be used for other purposes, such as spatial planning and wider public awareness.The development of BRIDGE will be ensured by a consortium of three institutions, respectively the Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), coordinator of the project, the Laboratório Nacional de Engenharia Civil (LNEC), and the University of Algarve (UAlg).

The housing theme (re)emerges in the political and mediatic agendas as one of the main global priorities, as shown by the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development or the Urban Agenda for
the European Union (2016), reflecting a world housing crisis. Whatever the specificities of each context, this symptom results from the consolidation of global housing financialization process.
More than a human right, housing tends to be read as a commodity and a financial asset, hindering access to adequate housing for an increasing part of the urban population and, consequently, worsening its general housing conditions. Considering the current urban scenario, the European Union announced in 2017 a future Agenda for Housing, underlying the necessity of a better articulation between the European policies and the housing policies of its member states. In Portugal, the government launched a New Generation of Housing Policies (2018) and it defends the universal access to adequate housing, through the ‘First Right’ – Housing Access Support Program (Decree-Law no. 37/2018), engaged to resolve the housing precarity in the country. Unlike its predecessor, this program presents a broad sense of habitat and a wide range of housing solutions based on integrated and participatory approaches. Following this inflexion, this research proposes a critical and reflexive lecture of the processes and projects carried out in the scope of the ‘First Right’ program, evaluating their contribution to a more spatial justice, from the policies and projects developed, to their implementation and space appropriation. It aims to inform more inclusive and sustainable policies and practices committed to universal access to an adequate housing, at the European and national levels, in line with at least two goals of the 2030 Agenda: 10. ‘Reduce inequality within and among countries’; 11. ‘Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable’. Given these goals and targets assumed, the proposed research could contribute to: new ways to read, plan and project housing models and typologies; new theoretical and methodological frameworks in light of the spatial justice; underline innovative and sustainable urban housing solutions.

The general aim of this project is to study the transformations in Siza’s collective housing over the past 5 decades, focusing on the linked analysis of: a) the projects (social and private housing) and the respective social and urban condition framework; and b) their residents and the relationships they develop with the projected space. The research follows an intensive methodology: comparative study of 3 Siza’s cases/collective housing projects. Each represents a moment on the architect’s professional life and corresponds to a moment in the life of society and the city; the 3 together, and their temporal sequence, represent (part of) Siza’s trajectory and that of contemporary society and of the city. The cases are: 1. Bouça/Porto – started following the 1974 revolution. Symbolising the Revolution, Architecture and the Right to the City when it was in decay; 2. Terraços de Bragança – Chiado, Lisboa, started in the 1990s. Symbolising the national real estate boom, modernization launch and procrastination of urban renaissance; 3. Building 611 West 56th Street – Hell’s Kitchen, New York, began in the 2010s. Symbolising hyper-globalisation, the rise of the city, financialisation of real estate and the incontestability of the value of architectural authorship. The greatest innovation in the proposal is in the temporal sequence of the 3 cases, which allows us to answer the following questions: what has changed in the production and appropriation of Siza’s houses and how do these changes relate to social transformations and the architect’s career? Who promoted the housing at the different times, locations, to what end and for whom? What are the formal, functional and contextual differences/similarities between the projects? How have transformations in the urban context impacted on the occupation of dwelling in social, use and value terms? What is the social profile of residents, their evolution and differences between cases? How do these residents live in Siza’s houses? Why do they choose to live in Siza-Pritzker houses, and what does it mean?

The research acceleration projects in CiTUA Thematic Lines are projects designed for one year, which have as objectives:

1. To promote intra-CiTUA cooperation, creating synergies among the various researchers – integrated, collaborators and others – and their research interests;
2. To reinforce the scientific production and the public dissemination within the Thematic Line;
3. To provide solid bases for the expansion of research developed within this scope through a future submission to national or international funding;

ROLE – THE (RE)DESIGN OF THE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT. What is changing?

Coordinator: Alexandra Alegre, Teresa Heitor

reHAB – Habitat regeneration as cradle for resilient healthy communities

Coordinator: Ana Tostões, Daniela Arnaut

Lis|PIH – LISBON PRE-INDUSTRIAL HOUSING. Diagnosis and contribution for policies to foster a sustainable urban and housing regeneration.

Coordinator: João Vieira Caldas, Joana Mourão

Fire-B-aware – Wildfire risk perception and preparedness amongst school children and their families in Portugal

Coordinator: Isabel Loupa Ramos, Fátima Bernardo

Território.justo.pt – Territories of Space Injustice in Portugal

Coordinator: Jorge Gonçalves, Sílvia Jorge

Cidade Tejo

Coordinator: Ana Morais de Sá, Fernando Nunes da Silva