Designed by the Portuguese architect Luís Pedro Silva, the Porto Cruise Terminal seeks to serve as a node between the cruise ship dock, the marina and the city. Despite being a small building, especially when compared with the big boats that anchor next to it, it is the largest project that has been built in the Port of Leixões and an important gateway to the entire region.
Description of the project by Luís Pedro Silva
Porto Cruise Terminal is a small port complex, initiative of the Administração dos Portos do Douro e Leixões, located at the South jetty in Matosinhos, Portugal.The project integrates new buildings, berthing work and exterior spaces of public vocation. the main building magnetizes the complex withholding several programmatic components: cruise ship terminal, marina facilities, the Science and Technology Park of the Sea of the University of Porto, event rooms and a restaurant.
The project was born within the 2004 PEDPL. The definition of a new cruise terminal has since then a double objective: improvement of the commercial efficiency and a better urban integration. It searches at the same time to endow the Leixões port of conditions to receive large cruise ships, up to 300 meters, and integrating functions and spaces with a urban vocation, that is, generating conditions of sociability with the surrounding urban community, now that the dependency bond between the population towards the fishing activity is dissipated such as that between the port towards the canneries.
The Terminal is located at the end of the jetty, in its curve sector, within the Atlantic Ocean, 750 meters away from Matosinhos city and 10 km away via river-sea or road from Oporto Ribeira, the most requested turistic point.
The proposal is largely dependent on the main building, which constitutes a node between the 3 main functions: the new cruise ship quay, the new marina, and the new street linking to the city. It receives and sends dispatchers and addressees of this three motivations because it includes inthe sea side the departure/arrivals rooms and marina facilities, and in the land side the Science and Technology Park of the Sea of the University of Porto, event spaces, a small restaurant and parking.
Enchanted by the jetty's curve and by this intermediary commitment and vocation, it enlaces the curved blades generating and prolonging itself in the form of 3 main exterior tentacles and a fourth falling inwards, in an helical ramp connecting the internal functions within a quadruple height space. The unrolled exterior arms lead the investigators level to the sea-side and the departure level to the cruise gangway or to the elevated walkway towards the beach and Matosinhos city.
The building is not very large, mostly when compared with the cruise ships it can shelter. From the beach side, one can realize that its place is clearly inside Leixões port, in such a manner that it faces towards the jetty, not revealing any openings and declaring a mysterious blind façade. The cover and the blade, summit and tilted, grant its personality profile. The bus large-cover slightly touches the granite seawall suggesting a distant invitation towards the exterior. From faraway the building is read by its volumetry and by the sinuous white with all its nuances regarding light and atmosphere variation. Closely the arches and its texture appeal to proximity, involve movements and the body, inviting the look and the touch. At the accessible cover, the land and the ocean meet and distend the soft broadness that the calm eye can reach.
