Sumit Singhal Sumit Singhal loves modern architecture. He comes from a family of builders who have built more than 20 projects in the last ten years near Delhi in India. He has recently started writing about the architectural projects that catch his imagination.
Headquarters and Logistic Centre of the Plural Pharmacy Cooperative in Coimbra, Portugal by ORANGE arquitectura
January 28th, 2019 by Sumit Singhal
Article source: ORANGE arquitectura
The former Topázio’s Factory site results from the relocation of the previous Emídio Navarro Avenue unit, in the Coimbra city center, to Pedrulha’s Industrial Area in the late 1950’s.
The strong presence of this building in the former National Road 1, currently known as Rua Manuel Madeira, can be seen, mainly, on its elevation extended along the way, with a modern language where the horizontality and the repetitive rhythm, given by the openings and friezes, are outstanding. On the other hand, the vertical gestures of the tower used to protect the Silos, attached to the transparent Manufacturing Room, and of the limestone wall where the institutional masts are anchored, appear in clear contrast on both east and west ends of the elevation, respectively.
Lead Architect: Alexandre Saraiva Dias, Maria Amália Freitas
Collaborators: Tiago Nunes da Costa, Daniela Santos, Luis Salazar, Miguel Serpa Oliva, Daniel Gameiro, Ana do Vale Lopes, Elísio Graça, Nuno Pereira, Paulo Teixeira, João Portugal, Rui Santos, João Lopes
From the 1960’s onwards, these buildings have suffered successive extensions which altered significantly the original architectural composition. These extensions, as well as the several arbitrary demolitions, made the plot and some of the original project´s boundaries, practically unrecognizable.
The programmatic distribution required for the Headquarters and Logistic Centre of the Plural Pharmacy Cooperative’s new facilities led to various interventions in the remaining complex: the principles of preservation and valuing applied in the rehabilitation of the old Tower of the Silos and the Manufacturing Room were also considered for the existing public façade which determined the height, the finishes and the colours of the new interventions; the new construction, attached to the rehabilitated main façade, materializes in a markedly contemporary language that, rather than creating safety distances, attempts to assume the possible compromise on a purposely dubious contagion between two lexicons: yesterday and today.
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