Ardegães constitutes an area in the parish of Águas Santas, in the municipality of Maia, which combines relevant building degradation and social precariousness, with a high landscape and rehabilitation potential, encompassing sets of rural origins and mills on the banks of the River Leça with high architectural interest and possibilities for improving the quality of life of its residents.

The Urban Rehabilitation Operation (ORU) constitutes a tool for defining a strategy and actions to be implemented in a previously delimited Urban Rehabilitation Area (ARU), with the aim of encouraging its qualification, and can be “simple” (if based solely in promoting private investment) or “systematic” (if it also includes public investment).

However, since these tools were specially designed for application in more attractive territories (such as historic urban centers) and are based on tax incentives for private investors, in an area where owners do not have economic capacity, these instruments do not have an effect.

In this framework and through the mobilization of a multidisciplinary team, this project sought to rethink the Urban Rehabilitation Operations tool, in this case a simple ORU, proposing the production of a methodology that would allow expanding this instrument and articulating it with different forms of funding, through local technical assistance that would allow case-by-case monitoring, support for owners and tenants with lower incomes and spatial qualification to make greater use of the potential of this area.

Team

Production Team

Teresa Calix (Architecture/Urbanism) Coordination
Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto

Ana Silva Fernandes (Architecture/Urbanism) Co-coordination
Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto

Ana Pinheiro (Architecture/Urbanism)
Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto

Gisela Lameira (Architecture)
Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto

Helena Amaro (Law / Urban Planning Law)

Maria Inês Sousa (Landscape Architecture)
Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade do Porto

Mariana Almeida (Architecture/Urbanism)
Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto

Consultants

Aitor Varea Oro (Architecture/Urbanism)
Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto

Álvaro Domingues (Geography)

Clara Pimenta do Vale (Architecture/Construction)
Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto

Manuel Fernandes de Sá (Architecture/Urbanism)
Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto

Marta Martins (Sociology)

Nuno Travasso  (Architecture/Urbanism)
Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto

Paulo Farinha Marques (Landscape Architecture)
Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade do Porto

Rui Braz Afonso (Urban Economy)
Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto

Rui Fernandes Póvoas (Civil Engineering)
Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto