Lisbon, portugal
1990-2006
Photos: Daniel Malhão (Convent), Fernando Guerra (New Campus)
Higher Institute of Economics and Management of the University of Lisbon
The project of the Higher Institute of Economics and Management of the University of Lisbon includes two distinct moments: the rehabilitation of the Convent of Santa Brígida das Inglesas (known as Convento das Inglesinhas) and the creation of a new building set, valuing the historic building and qualifying the urban perimeter, building the extension in the contiguous vacant lots.
Like other convents of female religious orders in the Bairro da Madragoa, the Convento das Inglesinhas, founded in the early sixties, has undergone successive transformations over the centuries. In 1864, the convent was acquired by the Jesuits who maintained the Colégio de Jesus Maria José there until the establishment of the Republic, introducing in this period several extensions. With the Republic, the Museum of the Republican Revolution was born in this space, and later, the Higher Institute of Commerce, which gives rise to the Higher Institute of Economic and Financial Sciences, currently the Higher Institute of Economics and Management.
The rehabilitation of the convent consisted of providing and modernizing the necessary infrastructures for the functioning and connection of the various spaces, converting the semi-buried floor into a technical area and unloading pier. On the remaining floors, the original structure of the convent was maintained, adapting the various spaces in classrooms, offices, social rooms, study centers and spaces for administrative services. To provide greater thermal comfort, it was designed a glass facade around the cloister, maintaining, on the upper floor, a distance from the arches structure to function as an accessible balcony. A new building allows access through Quelhas street and contains the restaurant as well.
For the new area, the intention was to create a more permeable university campus, which could be used and traversed freely, along new routes connecting Francesinhas street and Miguel Lupi street. Two parallel buildings create a central courtyard aligned along the central axis of Francesinhas garden, whose void is replicated in this and which extends with the green treatment of the containment slope of Miguel Lupi street.
This opening to the city is accentuated with the implantation of the Library building on the main access axis, in a ramp ladder, which joins Francesinhas street to the central courtyard, reinforcing its public and collective character.