Written by
Clara Teixeira
Associate
The first week of every project looks the same. Before anyone sketches a building, the team collects every aerial photograph of the site that exists, from the earliest military surveys to last month’s satellite images, and lays them out on one long table.
Layers of the site
Old photographs show what the ground remembers: a stream that was culverted in the sixties, the line of a demolished wall, a field boundary that still shapes where water collects after rain. We trace each layer onto a single sheet, one over the other, until the site starts to suggest its own plan.
At Ribeira Exchange, the 1951 survey showed a public passage through the block that had been closed for decades. Reopening it became the organising idea of the whole project.
Slow first, fast later
A week can feel like a long time to spend before drawing anything. In our experience it is the week that saves the most time later. Decisions made from the air are rarely the ones we have to undo on the ground.
End of the journal