The Magueira comprises approximately 300 acres; it was the focus of a recent international competition won by the Richard Rogers Partnership. The aim of the competition was to design a masterplan for the Margueira and create a new urban center to extend the Lisbon Metropolitan Area across the Tagus. The Margueira was the focus of the students work. They traveled to Portugal and spent time in Lisbon, Oporto, Coimbra, Aveiro, and other cities to see a variety of contemporary works of architecture. The principal objectives for the studio work was:
• to explore the nature of beauty in architecture
• to understand and exploit the creative relationship between research and design
• to learn to define independently a direction in your work as preparation for your final project
• to explore both light and lightness
• to explore the creation of spatial complexity and paradox with limited means
• to consider how landscape, urbanscape, and architectural form and space relate with one another
• to explore the specific properties of building materials through design
• to develop research skills by engaging in case studies, site analysis, and programming
• to express one’s architectural ideas precisely, completely, and exclusively through non-verbal two-dimensional and three-dimensional media
• to explore the possibilities of unprogrammed space