The Future of Mechanical Nostalgia

The modern city longed for speed. The mechanical elevators built in Lisbon at the end of the nineteenth century transformed its citizens’ experience of urban landscapes. With the help of funiculars and engines, the power of swift vertical ascension became a trademark of the metropolis. Pleasant vibrations transmitted through metal assemblages caused new cinematic images to course through the old city. This was a long time ago, in a period when pedestrians competed for the streets with horse-drawn carriages and animal traction. Yet the infrastructure remained active throughout the twentieth century, even as automobiles took over the city. When the population boomed, business and housing shifted from downtown to better-served areas, often connected by tramways. Like many European cities, Lisbon experienced a decay in its center, an abandonment that reached its peak in 1988 when the Chiado district burned to the ground. Called in to renovate the devastated area, Álvaro Siza inserted a metro station as a key transportation hub within a complicated topography. The old elevators became a picture-postcard setting in which to sing fado, while the city was consumed by its own imagery.

Traffic infrastructure as a tourist asset

The new Graça funicular is set on the hill opposite Lisbon’s famous elevators. It now offers pedestrians a gentle way to climb the anguished streets of the historical city. To the east, it is complemented by an elevator from Campo das Cebolas to Sé, while to the west of it are mechanical escalators leading from Mouraria to the castle. Anyone familiar with Lisbon toponyms knows that we are looking at the epicenter of tourism. In 2024, the neighboring Cruise Terminal (wbw 4 – 2018) delivered an average of 2 092 visitors per day, an army of tourists climbing up the hills to conquer the city’s most coveted attractions. The result is an area crammed with tuk-tuks, taxis, buses, minibuses, excursions, and Lonely Planet travelers of all ages and provenances. Babel. Now fully functional, the three mechanical amenities aim to tame these masses and provide an alternative means of ascending to the must-visit sightseeing spots.

In Martim Moniz, where you can get on the famous tram 28, there are long queues of tourists waiting to fill the overused tramline. The tram company had to start running an alternative line with regular buses—which were unattractive for tourist selfies—to serve the few, persistent Lisboners that still live in the area. The pace and flexibility of the new mobility system that has been inaugurated is not replacing the tram queues, whose raison d’être is the photograph rather than the wish for movement. But it certainly helps to relieve the pressure on the variety of systems that exist to conquer the hill.

Gently threaded line

Atelier Bugio’s design reflects architect João Favila’s attentive observation of Lisbon’s history. Reading old cartography and observing the stones that carry the marks of urban development, Favila revealed the lines of the ancient—and now barely visible—city wall. More obvious in the Mouraria escalators, the new mobility system uses surgical interventions in the old city as a strategy to emphasize its own narrative powers. Appropriating vacant lots and abandoned municipal buildings, the project tears down former additions that obliterated the rationale behind certain historical forms. It also takes over the interior of existing buildings, carves tunnels below streets, and creates elegant new volumes in the public space. These intricate strategies allow the architect to avoid conflicts when mechanically dictated straight lines are inserted into the urban fabric. Unlike the violent gestures of the nineteenth-century elevators, which affirmed the power and speed of the machine among the buildings of a bygone era, Favila’s elevators merge smoothly with the historical district and emphasize the value of the old buildings. The new, well-executed design of the infrastructure has a peculiar attention to detail and craft that is unusual for projects of this kind. With elegant handrails, sophisticated tiles in dialogue with local stone stereotomy, wooden window frames, and a unique Swiss-made cabin, the construction bears the marks of highly acclaimed architectural craftsmanship. As a result, the novel mechanical access to Castelo Hill is substantially different from the historical experience of ascending the slope in Lisbon’s nineteenth-century elevators.

Investing in pedestrian traffic

Tourism is the primary economic engine of Lisbon’s recent rebirth, and it has a substantial impact on the city’s net income. Hence, it is not surprising that the municipality invests in its short-term users’ welfare. More telling is the lavish investment in pedestrian mobility, as opposed to the priority given to automobile-based traffic systems for its long-term residents. Despite some occasional expansions to the metro line, the political and public disputes over the efficiency of bike lanes and soft mobility services, which are increasingly popular, major municipal investments continue to favor car infrastructure. Traffic jams remain the hallmark of social asymmetries, which increased with the housing crises that loom large in the life of every Lisboner. Operating in parallel, tourism has triggered the financialization of Lisbon’s housing, following the tendencies of other European capitals, with citizens being expelled from their own cities. And while Castelo Hill is now populated by colorful tourists experiencing the new elevators to move swiftly through their hasty vacations, there are city areas where the air pollution exceeds European safety standards owing to the outrageous intensity of car usage. There is no hope to be found in electric cars, which will just displace the effects of pollution from the city center to mining areas, and the endless surfaces required for individual car transportation will remain in place for the next decades. Asphalt will keep occupying the ground needed to plant trees and continue to contribute to high temperatures in the city in an epoch of extreme climatic events. This litany could keep on going. The carefully designed and luxurious elevators designed by João Favila for Castelo Hill are a reminder that not everything is lost. And that, beyond mechanical nostalgia, architects still possess the knowledge and skill to envision alternative futures. May the entire city and the unprivileged benefit from public policies for pedestrians. – André Tavares