Marvila [Lisboa]

TERRITORY AND COMMUNITY

Former summer area of the aristocracy and upper bourgeoisie, in the 17th and 18th centuries, Marvila was industrialized in the 19th century, filling up with villages and workers' yards to which, in the first half of the 20th century, neighborhoods of huts were added and where the workers from the north of the country lived, in extremely precarious conditions. In order to relocate these people, a continued effort to build social housing in Chelas, on the northern interior area, was initiated by the Lisbon City Council until the 1990s.

The comunnity is constituted by two large areas, separated by the railway line: the northern interior where the social housing districts coexist, separated by urban voids (resembling an cluster of islands) and the riverside area that, having deteriorated in recent decades due to the closure of factories and warehouses, has been the subject of a recent gentrification with the reuse of many vacant spaces for creative, catering and cowork activities.

In Bairro dos Alfinetes, Marvila's Public Library, one of the referred 'islands' of social housing, was inaugurated in December 2016, becoming a socio-cultural center with a significant impact in breaking the isolation of this area of the city and functioning as an incubator for several projects of social and cultural intervention in the territory.