Building in Macau’s historic district distinguished by UNESCO

Macau Business. By LUSA. 27 November 2022.

Local architects Rui Leão and Carlotta Bruni have been distinguished with an award for innovation in construction from UNESCO regarding a service building located in the city’s historic centre.

The building – the M30 Integrated Infrastructure for Power Supply and Waste Collection – was distinguished with the award for New Design in Heritage Contexts for being an example of “an innovative new design in a world heritage context”, according to a statement published on the website of the United Nations Educational Organization, Science and Culture (UNESCO).

The building “navigates a challenging setting on a tight urban lot in the buffer zone of the Historic Centre of Macau World Heritage”, by combining “vernacular brickwork that echoes the adjacent older buildings with weathered steel and stainless-steel”, added the awards jury, which analyzed a total of 50 entries from 11 countries and regions in the Asia-Pacific region.

Rui Leão, who is also president of the International Council of Portuguese-Speaking Architects (CIALP), stressed that this UNESCO award came to show the importance “of intervening in an exemplary way in a city with world heritage.”

“If we had this heritage and capacity in the past, we also have to have this capacity today,”  he considered, in his statements to Lusa. According to Rui Leão, the award “confirms that Macau is capable of producing exceptional architecture in a heritage environment, and [this project] is an example to demonstrate that it is possible to insert new infrastructures in a historical context without disqualifying them and, in fact, making them more interesting and rich.”

The building is located in a “very special place (next to Pátio da Eterna Felicidade), where Portuguese and Chinese urbanism meet,” he explained, adding that he was delighted with this award.

Rui Leão and Carlotta Bruni had already won the 2012 Jury Commendation for Innovation in the 2012 UNESCO Asia-Pacific Heritage Awards for Cultural Heritage Conservation for the reading room of the Portuguese School of Macau.

Launched in 2000, the UNESCO Asia-Pacific Awards for Cultural Heritage Conservation “recognizes exemplary efforts by individuals and organizations to restore or conserve structures, places, and properties of heritage value in the region” and encourages “other property owners to undertake conservation projects within their communities, either independently or by public-private partnerships,” according to its website.