MACAU, CHINA

CEM. - Companhia de Eletrcidade de Macau & IAM. - Instituto para os Assuntos Municipais

2021

Completed

Infrastructure

SIPCA-MO ENGINEERING CONSULTANCY, LTD., CEM DESIGN DEPARTMENT, TECPROENG MACAU, GENYIELD CONSTRUCTION CO, LTD.

Nelson Silva

Faced with the challenge in upgrading the electrical supply and waste collection in the old town, in 2016, CEM, the Macau Electrical Company (CEM – Companhia de Electricidade de Macau) and IAM, the Municipal Affairs Bureau of Macau (IAM – Instituto para os Assuntos Municipais) decided collectively to commission these two types of infrastructure by assigning a single plot of land to both and have them stacked up in multiple levels.
It represented an innovation to which there was no administrative framing in the city`s zoning. The project for Beco dos Faitiões, which we are submitting to this award, was the first project conceived with this new procurement policy. We understood from the start of the project that the concentration of infrastructure implied in the brief would have a huge impact in the old neighborhoods with their very delicate configuration of scale and the historic fabric with its inherent organic character. The project is the first commission launched to optimize the design of these utilities in an integrated solution occupying a single urban plot. The site is located in a Chinese historical neighborhood near the old harbor, facing Wan Chai island in Mainland China, which in the past was the center of the Chinese city (or the Chinese bazaar as it was known to the Portuguese), organized along Rua da Tercena along the inner harbor developed between the shoreline and Rua de Santo António and Rua de São Paulo, above which there were farms and suburbs of the Catholic city clustering around the Church of Mater Dei (current Ruins of Saint Paul) and the Mount Fortress (Fortaleza do Monte)