José Miguel López, Jérôme Rens and Sergi Ruperez have developed the winning proposal to revitalise an urban area of Lisbon

José Miguel López, Jérôme Rens and Sergi Ruperez, students on the URV Bachelor’s Degree in Architecture, have won the state phase of the Architecture Student Contest 2023, an international competition promoted by the Saint Gobain multinational. Participating in the competition are more than 2,800 students from 210 universities who have to respond to an architectural challenge by proposing a modern construction project that improves the well-being of the occupants of a building or sector.

In the 2023 edition, the students had to present a project to revitalise the urban area of the Lisbon City Council (Portugal) and give it cultural and public use. It is an area of the Portuguese capital that is being developed around the river outside the Old Town. The objective was to redefine this area as a cultural centre that focused on the audiovisual arts by creating the new video library of Lisbon as the vertex of a triangle formed by the nearby art schools.

Students from the URV School of Architecture (ETSA) presented the project ‘Lisbon Air’, which earned them the first prize of 1,500 euros, and now they will have to defend it at the final competition, from 26 to 28 June in Lisbon.

The winning project

The residential building proposed by the URV students is designed for passive cooling with a double envelope for protection from the sun, cross ventilation and a trombe wall system to air condition the living spaces. In addition, it incorporates other strategies such as water use and collection, solar panels on the roof and dry construction to minimize the use of water during the building process.

The new building has a variety of uses, including a ground floor for shops, the first floor for co-living with common areas for communal activities, and the other floors for private homes.

The reform of the existing building used the same design criteria to maintain a similarity between the two buildings. The architects created a triple-height reception area that connects the interior with the exterior and, at the same time, ensures the quality of the interior air through the chimney effect.

The URV students were first, ahead of participants from the University of Valladolid and the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. The judges took into account the architecture, the technical criteria and the constructive details.

The state phase of the competition was held on 5 May at the Official College of Architects in Madrid.