Atelier da Rua: a participated street design strategy

Abstract

Streets are key elements on the city urban structure. Despite the importance of this structural and living urban element, the contemporary Portuguese situation is characterized by the lack of investment in the realization, use and maintenance of many streets. Moreover it is noted local authorities’ difficulties to communicate with citizen everyday life problems within the street, and to approach diffuse civic structures. These are some of the problems encountered in small and local scale architectural projects. Participated project processes tackle these issues through the understanding of the existing problems and promoting new processes to face them. This paper is done in the research scope of Atelier da Rua (Street Atelier) focused to meet contemporary needs of intervention in the street public space. The methodological hypothesis applies Atelier da Rua strategy to improve community living. This paper aims to explore the combination of Atelier da Rua (Pita, 2014 b) methodology and the values of a “partnership” relation (Arnstein, 1969).