The Técnico Innovation Center will have a 24-hour study space, an exhibition area to open the academy to the city, and other facilities. The project should be ready in 2023, more than a decade late.
Built in 1904, it served as a shelter for the Carris streetcars until 1996, and after that, until 2004, it served as a bus stop. Since then, it is a parking lot with its days counted: in 2011, António Costa, then Mayor of Lisbon, and António Manuel Serra, president of the Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), signed a protocol for the cession of the old Gare do Arco do Cego. The IST wanted to set up a 24-hour study center for students and a space open to the city.
Ten years have passed and the project is only now getting off the drawing board, expected to be completed in 2023. It will be called Technical Innovation Center and will be a complement to the IST Alameda campus, in a privileged location - not only is it close to said campus, but also next to the Arco do Cego garden, which in recent years has become very used by students.
The Technical Innovation Center will have a study area available 24 hours a day, which can be used not only by IST students, but also by the general population - Unlike what happens with the study space that the University of Lisbon gave birth to in the former Caleidoscópio, in Campo Grande, which is exclusive to students of that university.
But as one of the main objectives of Técnico Innovation Center is open academy to the city (and vice versa), the future building will have an exhibition space to showcase the best of the science, technology, and innovation that is produced by IST's 23 research centers, by the 32 student groups from the most diverse areas, or by its partners. The idea is even to counteract the closure of the universities themselves, to take the academy out of its Ivory Tower, and show the city what Técnico's students and researchers do.
The Technical Innovation Center will also have a cafeteria and restaurant spacewith a differentiated offer at affordable prices, and with auditoriums to host presentations and conferences. In the same building, a new advanced first aid station of the Lisbon Fire Brigade Regiment will also be installed, to which the staff of the Defensores de Chaves Avenue barracks will be transferred - one of the counterparts imposed in the agreement of cession of space to Técnico by the city hall.
The reconversion operation of the old Gare do Arco do Cego focuses on the rehabilitation and consolidation of the existing building, providing it with the essential spatial, functional, and environmental conditions for its occupation, aiming for great flexibility of use.
The architectural project starts from the clear intention of revealing and enhancing the spatial amplitude of the naves, marked by the presence of zenithal light and by the rhythm, geometric dynamism, and slenderness of the metallic structure, ensuring the safeguarding and enhancement of those elements that best define the essence and architectural identity of the building.
The reconversion of the Gare do Arco do Cego, with iconic ambition in relation to the city and the comprehensive territory of knowledge, aims to accommodate new teaching and non-learning facilities needed for the operation of the Alameda Campus, in order to provide a better response to the current educational paradigm, centered on the active role of the student in the teaching-learning process.
- Technical Innovation Center
The launching ceremony for the Técnico Innovation Center took place last week, when construction also began. The entire building should be ready in the first half of 2023, after an investment of 12 million eurosof which four million result from community funds from the Lisbon Regional Operational Program; the remaining amount will be put up by IST and by the insurance company Fidelidade, and the division was not disclosed.
The Técnico Innovation Center began to be designed, as we mentioned at the beginning of this article, in 2011, with the signing of a protocol for the cession of space between the Lisbon City Hall and IST. It has already had to be called "Técnico Learning Center" and to open in 2015. But the poor state of conservation of the old station's foundations forced IST to redo the project, which was done internally and would be approved by the municipality in 2017.
