ALCANENA was conceived as a broader programme of territorial research, pedagogical experimentation and public action, coordinated by LAP LAB in partnership with FAUP and developed within the framework of the institutional collaboration between the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto and the Municipality of Alcanena.
Although the initiative was not carried forward, the work produced during its preparation remains as a projective archive: a collection of methods, formats, hypotheses and possible actions for engaging with the urban, social and cultural conditions of the territory.
The programme was structured as a platform for multiple outputs. Workshops, public presentations, exhibitions, research documents, pedagogical devices and territorial actions were imagined as complementary formats through which architecture could operate between academic investigation, municipal strategy and local experience.
Among these possible developments, Minde became the most advanced case study. Under the title Constellations: A Clinic for the Urban Economy of Minde, the workshop proposed an intensive reading of the village through its public space network, focusing on Largo Justino Gomes, Praça 14 de Agosto, Praça Velha and Miradouro do Lavadouro.
These places were understood as a territorial constellation: a system of relations between material structures, social practices, cultural dynamics and everyday forms of collective life. The proposal approached public space not only as an urban surface, but as a social infrastructure and a field for the collective production of knowledge.
The Minde workshop was designed as an urban clinic, a device for observation, diagnosis and strategic imagination. Through fieldwork, mapping, debate, visual production and public presentation, the initiative sought to bring together students, researchers, local agents, municipal representatives and the community in a shared process of territorial interpretation.
Beyond Minde, ALCANENA was imagined as an expandable framework, capable of activating other places, themes and collaborations within the municipality. Each subproject would operate from a specific territorial condition while contributing to a broader reflection on public space, local economies, cultural identity, mobility, ecological vulnerability and the role of architecture in territories outside the dominant metropolitan centres.
This post presents part of the work developed for ALCANENA: an unfinished initiative, but one that continues to reveal a possible model for disciplinary action. Its value remains in the questions it opened, in the methods it tested and in the possibility of understanding architecture as a mediator between territory, institution and community.
