Resumen de El papel de los centros comerciales y de ocio urbanos en la construcción de la ciudad compacta contemporánea: los casos de Lisboa y Barcelona
Pedro José Dos Santos Ferreira da Fonseca Bento
The issue of collective spaces is a well known issue that relates to a multitude of important thoughts about our complex reality: it is displayed in a wider debate on the collective dimension of architecture. lt is directly related to a set of phenomena that affect the contemporary city and the public space. And it is a particularly relevant topic within the major urban problems, given the spectacular explosion of objects related to leisure and consumption that have flooded European cities in recent years. In a word, the object of study of this thesis is constituted by all those great architectural pieces in which meeting and living spaces are developed and that configure, at the same time, spaces for leisure and consumption. In this sense, the object of study corresponds to a relatively large group of architectural compounds where traditional commercial types known as Shopping Centres and its variants are inserted; more recent typologies known as leisure and entertainment centers plus all sets built in where indoor occur with the above characteristics.
This reflection has two main objectives. The first is to contribute to enhance the current understanding of collective spaces taking place in the compact city. The second, through the construction of some debate, aims at assessing opportunities and threats that those urban pieces may represent towards the construction of the city, the qualification of their collective spaces and the urban development and transformation. The following is the simple way we found to clarify the fundamental hypothesis of this study: In certain circumstances, these artifacts of leisure and consumption, such as urban shopping centers, not only create new collective places in the compact city but also qualify and enhance the system of public spaces where they are inserted, even acting as catalysts or drivers of the urban development and transformation itself. As a matter of fact, if the artifacts that we will analyze generate different, interesting collective spaces with quality; if instead of imposing the users, high surveilled spaces. they provide safe spaces with less control; if the experiences that one can live indoors do not turn one simply into a consumer but enable one to experience various activities such as accessing a service, have a meal, hold a meeting or see a movie; and at last: if, the internal image of these artifacts does not set us out of reality, time and space and a relations with the outer space is built up, then we could say that the spaces generated inside these artifacts are not so different from the traditional public spaces. They do not reduce us to mere consumers in a fantasy world extremely secure. On the other hand, if these inner spaces provide important morphological collective relations with the public spaces located in their environment and are not set up as simple closed containers; if intersections are created, if accesses are multiplied and finally, if important visual interaction is installed, between outer and inner space of these objects, then we could say that they integrate the existing system of collective and public spaces. And if we confirm that the above mentioned leisure and consumption artifacts meet both criteria, inner and outer, then we can really say that they create synergies with the spaces that surround them and they really are catalysts for new experiences and urban life experiences.
