As General Junot’s Napoleonic army marched across Portugal, the Royal Family had already prepared it’s escape to Brasil. Although a true expected decline, this was the mark that set up the following nineteenth century and the eventual downfall of the Portuguese monarchy and consequently its transition to a Republican country. Assisting the invasion, the later Civil War and the years between the different regimes and society’s was the Ajuda National Palace, last great built document of the late Portuguese monarchy period. Because of its Architecture, symbolism and national importance, the Ajuda’s National Palace is certainly a catalyst for the area, attracting to its outskirts many who claimed land to build their homes. Nonetheless due to successive interruptions to the monumental construction and later absence of a convenient plan to deal with its scale and consequent transition to the new and unplanned neighborhood which settled all around it, now the monument functions more as a pathology, tying the place to a situation of indefinition instead of a means to a clarification.
This is the aim of the presented project, to create a convincing reality able to clarify the monumental area as well as a means to help develop the habitable area all around it, tying scales, materials and history’s aiming to clarify the Neoclassic Architecture as it integrates it in today’s artistic and social environment also giving means for the city to expand and consolidate a place from which king’s used to see boats set sail.
