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Nam Van Square, MacauA peninsula, lying 60 kilometres (37 miles) to the southwest of Hong Kong, Macau isthe Las Vegas of the new China. As Manuel Vicente explains, when he was asked tocreate an important new public space for the city it provided the opportunity to createa plaza that was able to assimilate the past forms of the historic city withoutabsorbing the symbolism of its colonial history.

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‘Os cavalos a correr, as meninas a saltar …’1

After all the noise and excitement over Macau’s administrativetransition settled down post 19 December 1999, the new localgovernment was faced with the requirement for a new public square,distinctly postcolonial, not only from a symbolic point of view, butalso and most urgently from a functional point of view: the inheritedhistorical civic space was clearly inadequate, even in mere capacityterms, to harbour the collective rites and rituals of the new Macau.

When VLB Arquitectura & Planeamento LDA were appointed todesign the project, they immediately presumed that the mainobjective of the new administration was not to create a sitecondemned to the usual pastiche – either ‘Chineseness’ or‘Palladianess’ – but instead to create the opportunity for somethingnew: free of any symbolism though eager to pursue the hybridismof the urban form that consistently configured the city throughoutthe course of history.

A new development plan for the central shore of the historic city– the Nam Van Lakes plan designed by Manuel Vicente throughoutthe late 1980s and 1990s, which interpreted and extended thecurve of the historic bay out into the river and featured aculmination point in the form of a formal/functional roundabout atthe meeting point of the two lakes – stood out as the irrefutableplace for the new civic project. This was even more irrefutablegiven the immediate vicinity of the newly built Macau Tower, aquintessential modern and abstract structure, and a true icon withno connotations with the city’s past.

Designing a public site requires recognition of a place prior andbeyond the invention of its space. In the south, the creation ofpublic space traditionally begins almost as a casual accident in theurban fabric, the poetic essence of which becomes, in the course oftime, successively ascertained through the interplay andmanipulation of hidden geometries waiting to be named.

The values VLB proposed for Macau’s new Nam Van Squarewere mainly those related to the plural and diversified fruition ofthe site. From the core of the roundabout’s inner square, the formalhard-surfaced floor that represents the real foundation of the publicspace, one can walk through the series of familiar typologies thatirradiate from it – esplanades, terraces, gardens, walkways andembankments – to the lake’s shore, along a path shaded by thetraffic flyovers that form an important part of the design of the newcivic square. Here the architects’ reconfiguring of the supportingstructures as part of the new built landscape creates a show ofdifferent speeds and rhythms made by the conjugation of peopleand machines, simultaneously circulating, in a whole complexconcoction pregnant with unsuspected urbanities.

An urban park was commissioned two years after the square, asa simple landscaping of the access areas for the new (third) bridgeto the outlying islands, in an adjoining stretch of causeway. Thisproject organises two different park areas along the twowaterfronts, each finding a design pattern to divorce itself from itsproximity to the roads. On the lakeside, a sloping scenic gardenwith pools on different levels overlooks the city and transforms theover-imposing macro-presence of the bridge as a framer of views.And on the riverside, a children’s playground stretches along thewater, like a palace in an Indian fairytale. 4

Note1. ‘Horses are galloping.’

Overview of the Macau peninsulabefore the construction of the thirdbridge.

A flyover as shelter.

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Plan of the whole territory of Macau, showing the water beds and majorgambling investments (in orange). Nam Van Square is between the twowestern bridges. The reclamation between the two islands is thelocation of the new megacasino strip.

Map of the city of Macau showingthe Nam Van Lakes reclamationscheme and its integration within thehistoric Praia Bay. Nam Van Squareis shown at the intersection of thetwo lakes and the river.

The points of intensity in the design are concentrated on the transition of levels and the transferfrom road to public space structures. The flyovers were developed as two-sided objects: the trafficdisappears when viewed from the lakeside, and flies by when seen from above.

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View towards the lake. The landscape areas bind the different levels and functions.

The curved complexity transverses different levels.

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General plan for the urban parkunder the third bridge.

The modelling of the floor, which creates an organic movement along the lakeshore, provides a means of simultaneously alienating and integrating themassive presence of the pre-existing bridge flyovers.

Macau, located on the South China coast, was aPortuguese-administered enclave from 1557 until 19December 1999: the date when it was returned to thePeople’s Republic of China, thus becoming the SpecialAdministrative Region of Macau. It comprises thepeninsula of Macau and two islands, a total area of 24square kilometres (9.3 square miles), up from 14 squarekilometres (5.4 square miles) 20 years ago.

The liberalisation of the territory’s gambling industryin 2002 was the political milestone that triggered animmense leap in the city’s urban development, with theambition of moving away from a South China nostalgiainto a regional economic player.

Macau’s architectural legacy is the fruit of a symbioticconfrontation of Portuguese city-making praxis against amatured local Chinese social context and modusfacendi. Its geopolitical status, between China and theAsian archipelago, has historically been a place ofmiscegenation and deviation, which has produced in thearchitectural field a culture of typological hybridism.

Text © 2008 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: p 94-5 © MacauInformation Bureau; pp 96, 98(t), 99(r) © Rui Leão, Carlotta Bruniand Manuel Vicente, photos Carlotta Bruni; pp 97(t&c), 99(l) ©Rui Leão, Carlotta Bruni and Manuel Vicente; p 97(b), 98(b) © RuiLeão, Carlotta Bruni and Manuel Vicente, photowww.almosterstudio.com