Breakout Session | Railway buildings out of service in Portugal: rehabilitation and new uses

Led by Portuguese Architect António Borges, this session will present photographs and drawings of rehabilitation projects in Portugal and invite discussion on comparative approaches in other countries.

Over the past 40 years, the closure of several railway lines in Portugal has left around a hundred stations and associated buildings abandoned. Once central to the urban and social development of towns and cities, these historic structures have suffered from degradation and neglect.

In recent years, rehabilitation programmes have emerged in cooperation with municipalities, entrepreneurs, academia, and other partners. These projects aim to preserve the memory of railway heritage by maintaining constructive structures, safeguarding volumetric and functional configurations, and recovering historic finishes, while adapting buildings to new uses and functions.

About the session leader

António Borges is a Portuguese architect with a degree from the Faculdade de Arquitectura do Porto and a master’s in Regional and Urban Planning from the Universidade Técnica de Lisboa. Since the 1990s he has worked at Infraestruturas de Portugal/IP Património and its predecessor companies. He became a General Member of INTBAU after attending the 2018 World Congress Everything Old is New Again.

Further information: Início | Infraestruturas de Portugal & Início | IP Patrimonio