Viana do Castelo is a lovely coastal city in northern Portugal, whose riverfront and historic centre has been subject to a state-sponsored urban renewal programme for the last 15 years.
Rising ostensibly over the city’s horizontal river front, the “Coutinho” Building stands alone as a 13 storey high lightning rod of negative public opinion since the 1970’s.
Under the umbrella of the urban renewal programme, the 105 dwelling-building was singled out for demolition, as it was deemed an “eyesore” and “urbanistic aberration”.
Unsurprisingly, this has generated considerable controversy, as opinions and aesthetic considerations clashed with the rights of owners and tenants, to say nothing of what has been perceived as crowd-pleasing demagogy behind the intent to expropriate and tear down an otherwise functional building.
As of this moment, it seems as the chosen course of action is to carry on with the demolishing and oitoo observatory couldn’t help but promote some discussion regarding the subject of tearing down “ugly ducklings”:
There are hundreds of “Coutinho” Buildings in Portugal. There are also many good examples of “Coutinho” Buildings all over Europe which have been conceded a second chance thanks to intelligent reuse projects, even though demolition was considered. Once all costs were factored, it became obvious that there were more economic, reasonable ways to reactivate and improve these dormant resources. One needs to look no further than the Mies Van der Rohe Award winner of 2017, NL Architects, and their conversion of a 1960’s vacant behemoth on the outskirts of Amsterdam, which overcame a demolition sentence to become a lively and vibrant building. Other examples abound, as is the case of last year’s edition of the same award, which distinguished the refurbishment of a French social housing complex comprising 3 buildings in Bordeaux carried out without moving the 530 tenants or increasing their rents.
These examples show how to sustainably expand the lifecycle of buildings not unlike “Coutinho”, improving in one fell swoop issues of accessibility, energy efficiency and public image, and thus transitioning, free from previous connotations, from the ugly duckling phase to the vibrant swan, becoming aspirational landmarks in the urban fabric.
The numbers involved in a demolition of this magnitude do not add up to a feasible formula that can be applied to all abhorrent buildings easily singled out in our country.
The announced cost of expropriation and demolition of this building is about 35 M €. It would be quite easy to condemn 10 “problematic” buildings in this region alone. Would it take 350 M € to get rid of them? Would it be so difficult to come up with 100 “eyesores” when we move our attention to the totality of national territory? What then? It simply doesn’t add up, but even assuming it did there are strong arguments to oppose the demolition course;
The environmental, human and economic cost of reducing such a building to rubble is at odds with the sustainability concerns of modern developed society.
Architecture, as a discipline, must be willing and able to engage with matters of reuse by considering the underlying possibilities of pre-existing buildings and acknowledging their problems as new opportunities, without having to start from a blank slate. To give a second chance to a building is to face it with a “can do” attitude, open and curious, reducing cost and minimizing environmental and community impact. It shouldn’t matter whether it is an old factory, a mid-century housing block or an “ugly duckling”. These are all resources waiting to be whipped back into function.
It’s not the objective of this text to propose anything concrete for the doomed “Coutinho” building, but rather to open a discussion and highlight some “trigger” points and strategies that could prove useful when facing a reuse project of this nature:
Contact with ground floor - propose alternative uses for non-built spaces that may provide added value to the urban surroundings; create permeability in the ground floor with a compatible programme; improve accessibility issues and relation with the public space;
Built Envelope - face the energy efficiency issues as an opportunity to overhaul the building’s image and urban connotation; improve the relation between the housing units and the outside;
Roof - using the roof as strictly logistic and infrastructural area constitutes a severe misuse of a strategic area, which could be widely rationalized to enhance the potential use of a space with great views, with a programme open to tenants and public;
We need to learn how to coexist with the output of the last 50 plus years of our urbanism, which wasn´t always pretty. We need to promote the debate on this subject and develop the methodology to improve on what is already there without falling prey to easy and demagogic discourses that result in wasteful management of public resources. We should steer clear of subjective takes on “aesthetic values” and invest on a careful reflection which may reveal the hidden qualities of the ugliest of “ducklings”. All good reasons to think about before pushing the Big Red Button.
oitoo observatory, 2019
Rising ostensibly over the city’s horizontal river front, the “Coutinho” Building stands alone as a 13 storey high lightning rod of negative public opinion since the 1970’s
Contact with ground floor - propose alternative uses for non-built spaces that may provide added value to the urban surroundings; create permeability in the ground floor with a compatible programme; improve accessibility issues and relation with the public space
Built Envelope - face the energy efficiency issues as an opportunity to overhaul the building’s image and urban connotation; improve the relation between the housing units and the outside
Roof - using the roof as strictly logistic and infrastructural area constitutes a severe misuse of a strategic area, which could be widely rationalized to enhance the potential use of a space with great views, with a programme open to tenants and public
We need to learn how to coexist with the output of the last 50 plus years of our urbanism, which wasn´t always pretty