• infrastructure
• open space
• transit system

The Metro do Porto in Porto, Portugal, highlight the potential for thoughtfully planned and carefully executed mobility infrastructures to transform a city and its region. The extent to which these projects deploy new infrastructures to repair and regenerate the city through well- articulated design interventions is particularly valuable within the global context of contemporary urbanization. The project was awarded Veronica Rudge Green price by Harvard GSD to the Architect Eduardo Souto de Moura, who conceptualized the architecture of the metro and facilitated the delivery of the project and the transport authority Metro do Porto that played central role in realization of the project. Metro do Porto is a heavy-infrastructure project of significant scale and complexity. Comprising approximately 70 kilometers of new surface and subsurface track and sixty new stations, it was designed and constructed in about ten years. The project is revolutionary in public transport in the metropolitan area of Porto and boosted several urban interventions such as the adaptation of the Luiz I bridge to accommodate the train and the new crossing for traffic highway. The scope of such an undertaking within a UNESCO World Heritage City is noteworthy. The incredibly high standard of design achieved by Souto de Moura and his team sets this project apart and makes it worthy of emulation. Metro do Porto creates opportunities for mobility that go beyond physical movement to advance social mobility and reinvigorate civic space. Porto and its region consist of sixteen municipalities undergoing intense demographic change and socioeconomic restructuring. The Metro do Porto is a strategically decisive project, providing the future template for a cohesive and resilient regional pattern. While mobility plays an important role in achieving this goal, the authority’s decision to engage a designer of Souto de Moura’s stature has ensured the project’s success at all scales. At the scale of the region, Metro do Porto not only connects residents on the periphery with amenities and services in the historic city, it also forges a collective identity through its negotiation of the region’s unique geography, and the deliberate composition of individual stations in relation to that geography. At the neighborhood scale, new stations become opportunities to connect previously segregated communities while rehabilitating public space to the highest standard. At the architectural or human scale, the experience of each station—as objects within a culturally rich urban landscape, and as interior architectures imbued with civic virtues—is exceptional due to their spatial and material quality.