Renovation of Church Ruins and Surrounding Environnment: Take Ruins of the Cathedral of São Paulo in Macau and Ruins of the Carmo Convent in Lisbon As Examples

Pengyu Zhao (College of Architecture and Urban Planning, Tongji University)

The establishment and destruction of a church often reveals the history of the city.When the church was destroyed in the course of historical changes, the urban environment and infrastructures around it was also facing renovation and reconstruction. How to preserve its historical value in a sustainable way and activate the vitality of the block through the reconstruction of urban facilities, such as cultural and commercial facilities, is a difficult problem for architects to think about. Through historical research and graphical analysis,this paper compares two cases: the renovation of The Ruins of the Cathedral of São Paulo in Macau with its surrounding neighborhoods, and the renovation of the Carmo Convent in Lisbon, Portugal. In the case of Macau, Portuguese architect Carrillho Da Graca was commissioned by the government to redesign the site of the Ruins of the Cathedral of São Paulo, which had been discovered by new archaeological discoveries at that time, and transform it into a Catholic Museum of Art. In the Lisbon case, anothor Portuguese architect Alvaro Siza renovated Ruins of the Carmo Convent and the surrounding Chiado neighborhood for 30 years and designed it as a complex of residential/ museum/retail functions.In the two cases, by establishing continuity of complex street sections around sites, architects have refined the integration of overlying historical layers. The decision-making mechanisms in the process of both projects in two different cultural contexts are also compared and analyzed.Similar renovation design strategies are used in the two cases, which may provides possible hints for designers dealing with urban regeneration projects.