Green spaces on the north side of Avenida dos Estados Unidos da América

Conceptual features in the definition of an Alvalade Neighbourhood Green Corridor (1940-1960)

Abstract

Supported in the investigation of the genesis and characteristics of Bairro de Alvalade’s (Alvalade Neighbourhood) Green Structure and with an emphasis on the municipal archives of Lisbon documentation, the article observes, in the context of planning and designing, the conceptual features that, in the definition of the Avenida dos Estados Unidos da América’s (United States Avenue) urban space, led to the implementation of a Green Corridor in the Alvalade’s Neighbourhood and the City. Based on the avenue's framework in the Plano de Urbanização da Zona a Sul da Avenida Alferes Malheiro (Urbanization Plan of the South Area of the Avenida Alferes Malheiro), approved in 1945, and the Plano Geral de Urbanização e Expansão de Lisboa (General Urbanization and Expansion Plan of Lisbon), elaborated by Étienne De Gröer (1882-1974) in between 1938 and 1948, the article revisits the growth of city and proposals for implementation along the avenue (1951, 1956 and 1959). In parallel, it lists the projects of the Neighbourhood housing complexes influenced by the publication in Portugal of the Letter of Athens (1948) and the emergence of the Movimento Moderno (Modern Movement), which, as a whole, led to the opening of the patio for public use and the redefinition of the avenue's urban space. Secondly, the article discusses the design of the avenue's urban space in the late 1950s following the teaching of landscape architecture in Portugal from 1942 by Francisco Caldeira Cabral (1908-1992) and its practice in the Lisbon City Council for the first generation of technicians with this specific training since 1950, whose ecological, artistic and open to interdisciplinary dialectics matrix allowed to explore the interstitial spaces of the neighbourhood and to implant a green corridor according to the concept of «continuum naturale».