As a 2012 European Center of Culture, Guimarães will be temporarily, and fundamentally redefined.  The small town will be host to thousands of international tourists, whose presence and activity alone will substantially transform the environment and identity of the small city, placing a strain on the civic services and infrastructure. This influx of population creates a productive tension between the needs of the tourists, seeking an authentic experience of place, and the needs of the residents, wishing to broadcast their unique culture without sacrificing its integrity.

The project expands the urban fabric from a fragmented horizontal and vertical composition to a fluid, continous landscape of shifting datums. In its shifting forms and selective skin, RESCAPE provides a new diversification of cultural and offerings on the public groundplane, providing a multitude of ‘microenvironments’ for events, leisure, and play.  The project acts as a ‘performance infrastructure’, supplying the city and tourists with the spaces they need to enjoy their presence in the city, and among each other. The project is composed of simple, modular, framed components, assembled on site into complex, performative sectional relationships through a combination of rotation and translation.  The system is easily prefabricated, consisting only of repeated “U-shapes” of structural timber.  The framework is “skinned” selectively with a “ruled surface”, creating a series of singular, linear elements, stacked and shingled to act as steps and seats.   The shifting light, vision, and sound quality around the structure suggests potential uses, while the ever shifting scale and sense of enclosure will attract a variety of users and urban actors.  Adaptable to a variety of sites, uses, and potential functions, the project is easily assembled and disassembled with simple mechanical connections, inviting later reuse