Seeing Energy Through Portscapes: Learning From Lisbon

Christel Diana Voncken, TU Delft
Regina Klinger, TU Delft
Maëlle Salzinger, TU Delft

As sites where city and sea meet, portscapes are central to contemporary discussions on climate change and energy transition. Instead of treating the fossil-to-renewable transition as a fixed technical system, we approach it as something relational: shaped by the spatial design of port and city, social organization, and the everyday activities of those who live and work there. In this approach, developed within TU Delft and PortCityFutures, we explore how the history of portscapes can help us rethink contemporary energy transitions.

This relational approach to energy transition was explored at a conference in Lisbon last March, where the COST Action PACT (Port City Territories in Action) brought together researchers, professionals active in the port industry, and practitioners working across fields such as urban studies, maritime logistics, heritage studies, and energy transition planning. Christel Voncken, Regina Klinger, and Maëlle Salzinger facilitated a hands-on workshop that invited participants to actively engage with the port-city landscape through historical images and collective reflection. The workshop pointed towards broader conceptual shifts regarding energy and port city territories.

This initiative is part of the Multi-Functional Quay Walls PCF Project.

Exploring Energy Through Portscapes: The Workshop in Lisbon

The workshop was structured as a 60-minute interactive session combining visual analysis, collective discussion, and design speculation. Archival images capturing the evolution of Lisbon’s waterfront were selected prior to the session.

Participants were divided into three groups, each working with the same set of materials at separate tables. The session opened by framing heritage as an active driver for decarbonized futures. After a short introduction showing how pre-carbon energy systems can offer inspiration for decarbonizing the present, participants worked through three steps: 

  • Reading the past through historic images of Lisbon’s waterfront 
  • Understanding energy systems by discussing their organization and ownership
  • Projecting the future by translating insights into spatial ideas for the contemporary port 

This structure allowed participants to move from observation → reflection → design, making the discussion both analytical and creative.

What Did Participants See? Energy Systems in the Past

When analyzing the historic images, participants quickly identified that different forms of energy in Lisbon's port were embedded in the infrastructure of daily life. Rather than concealed within technical systems, they were legible in the motion itself: in animals pulling carts, sails filling with wind, and the constant movement of people and goods through the port. 

Across the groups, several recurring observations emerged. Human labor dominated the 18th and 19th century waterfront, with wind and water serving as the primary energy sources. By the 20th century, wind and steam-driven transport coexisted, with old and new energy systems operating side by side — a visible trace of an energy transition still unfolding. Participants also noted how spatial design shaped energy-related activities. For example, the shift from open sandy shorelines to cement docks, the configuration of docking infrastructure, and the placement of market stalls and shade structures all reflected and enabled particular ways of using various forms of energy, from kinetic to mechanical, in daily port life. 

Recognizing energy systems

Fig. 1 Recognizing energy systems (Source: Sevim Sezi Karayazı).

How Was Energy Infrastructure Organized?

After locating energy infrastructure and consumption in the photographs, the discussion shifted from what was visible to how these systems functioned. Reflecting on the pre-twentieth-century images, participants noted that many visible energy practices appeared to operate at the scale of households and merchants rather than through centralized networks, even though some energy resources (such as coal) were already traded across wider regional and international networks. Instead of unified grids, energy was often embedded in everyday infrastructures, such as the delivery and storage of firewood for heating and cooking. This stood in sharp contrast to today's large-scale, often invisible systems and opened up questions about ownership, control, and accessibility of energy infrastructure in future transitions.

Reflecting on energy systems, their organization and functioning within the greater social and spatial environment (Source: Regina Klinger).

Fig. 2 Reflecting on energy systems, their organization and functioning within the greater social and spatial environment (Source: Regina Klinger).

From Past to Future: Emerging Ideas

In the final part of the workshop, participants translated their insights into spatial proposals for Lisbon’s waterfront. Participants questioned current spatial arrangements and explored how past solutions could be reinterpreted under present-day conditions.

Some of the ideas that emerged included:

  • Reintroducing sailing routes shaped by colonial history (such as those used for cacao and coffee) as a way to critically reconnect contemporary logistics with low-carbon energy systems, while acknowledging that these pre-carbon systems were built on and sustained by colonial exploitation.  
  • Creating public waterfront spaces (such as markets overlooking the container port) to reconnect citizens with port activities and bring the energy transition into everyday view.  
  • Building on the previous point of making the energy transition visible, mechanical shading systems could enable public uses such as sports and markets along the waterfront despite changing climate conditions, bringing people closer to the port and its transformation. 
  • Exploring nature-based solutions such as wetlands or green buffers as carbon sinks, which shows non-mechanical elements of the energy transition.  
  • Using existing infrastructure, like bridges, to better connect citizens to the waterfront and make the energy flows of the working port visible and legible in everyday life.  
  • Rethinking docking stations by allowing ships to berth perpendicular to the quay in carved-out docks to enable unloading from both sides, reducing turnaround times, emissions, and overall energy demand. 

These proposals were not only technical, but also spatial and social, emphasizing visibility, accessibility, and public engagement with energy systems.

Workshop Lisbon COST PACT. Presenting the different results from the design activity and entering dialogues about water values (Source: Sevim Sezi Karayazı).

Fig. 3 Workshop Lisbon COST PACT. Presenting the different results from the design activity and entering dialogues about water values (Source: Sevim Sezi Karayazı).

Reflections on the Process

The workshop revealed two notable shifts in how participants came to think about energy transitions in port-city territories. 

At first, participants needed some encouragement to move from pure analysis to sketching. But once they did, ideas quickly took shape — the act of drawing made abstract concepts tangible, sparked discussions, and opened unexpected perspectives. The move from a reluctance to commit ideas to paper toward confident sketching and co-creation was among the most fruitful outcomes of the session. 

Reintroducing past energy principles into the current portscape, through different scales (Source: Regina Klinger).

Fig. 4 Reintroducing past energy principles into the current portscape, through different scales (Source: Regina Klinger).

A second shift occurred as participants moved away from dominant narratives around ship fuels and technology — the primary focus of current policy and investment in maritime decarbonization (Seas At Risk, 2024) — toward the daily life practices and urban routines through which energy was produced, moved, and consumed. Scrutinizing the historic images from the 16th to the 20th century had redirected attention toward something more grounded: energy strategies embedded in the design of everyday urban life, such as positioning markets and public spaces near the port so that citizens naturally engage with its energy flows and ongoing transition. 

This reframing opened up a different view of the port: not as a node in global logistics, but as a site of local, social, and economic exchange, where energy flows are shaped by and for the communities they serve. Rather than optimizing existing systems, the exercise of scrutinizing historic port images suggested the possibility of rethinking them from the ground up — treating daily life, residents’ priorities, and the connections between urban dwellers and the energy and goods arriving by sea as the starting point, not an afterthought.

The sketch session resulted in systemic design ideas that connected the industrial port to the city (Source: Regina Klinger).

Fig. 5 The sketch session resulted in systemic design ideas that connected the industrial port to the city (Source: Regina Klinger).

Looking Ahead

The workshop demonstrated that working with historical images is not only a tool for reflection, but also a catalyst for imagination and dialogue. By making past energy practices visible and discussable, participants were able to put current port-city energy systems in perspective and engage more concretely with future transitions.

Project Researchers

Multi-functional Quay Walls Project Page

Acknowledgments

This blog post has been written in the context of discussions within the PortCityFutures Centre and the COST Action CA23138 research network. It reflects the ongoing work and evolving perspectives of the authors on the spatial, social and cultural dimensions of energy transitions in port city territories. This blog was edited by the PortCityFutures editorial team: Wenjun Feng and Eliane Schmid.

This blog was written by Christel Diana Voncken in collaboration with Regina Klinger and Maëlle Salzinger.

The authors would like to extend special thanks to the participants of the workshops in Lisbon and Amsterdam for their energy, ideas and cooperation, which greatly enriched this work. We are also grateful to the event facilitators for providing us with the opportunity to host our workshop as part of their programmes. Finally, we would like to thank the editorial colleagues for offering a platform to share this blog and its insights.

References

Seas At Risk. (2024). One Planet Shipping – Navigating the waves of climate change and overconsumption. Brussels, Belgium