National Coach Museum

The new Coach Museum emerges, not only, as a cultural site but also as a public utility space. In the words of the architect Paulo Mendes da Rocha “the Museum has no doors and relates to all of its surroundings”. The project is more than a museum; in the end it functions as an urban infrastructure providing a public utility space for the city.

Thus, two concerns coexist; on the one hand the primary need to expand the exhibition area of the museum and its technical support infrastructure, while on the other, the need to create additional attractions for the most visited museum in the country. Moreover, there was a need to bind one of Lisbon’s most prominent fronts, the Belém monument area, where the construction of the new building has created a new dynamism in the museum’s surrounding area, creating new public spaces and urban walkways in the city that are reminiscent of earlier times.