“I enter a building, see a room, and – in a fraction of a second – have this feeling about it.” – Peter Zumthor
The goal was simple: to draw our own Home!
This home would need to have the capacity to welcome us, answer our spatial needs, our functional requirements and be a lab of research, work and study. A living space, of familiarity and share. This space, Home, that welcomes us during the day, should promote an environment of its own, ours, and be the definer of our language, stimulating and sensitive, able to communicate with us and, which through, we communicate with each other. To express itself in a singular way, continuous and tangible, inciting our eyes to walk through it and interpreting it as a materialized poem, slowly declaiming its verses. The immersion in this, our, atmosphere, was the conducting wire for the thought and connection of this place, ours.
The project Casas do Capitão was triggered by the will to regenerate a city plot located on Guimarães’ historical center edge. This small parcel, as most of the neighboring ones, was defined by a succession of constructions that, over the years, occupied all the available space.
The intervention aimed to adapt this urban space to new ways of life, relieving it from the more precarious buildings and valuing the existing elements, such as the large XIX century building. This main building was the starting point and the matrix for the two new constructions that defined the plot: an extension at the ground level and a new commercial building on the north side.
The House is located in a typical plot in the outskirts of the city of Guimarães and is characterized by a dense construc:on environment that surrounds the plot where we are intervening.
The project unfolds around the direct concerns of the context in which it is inserted – the privacy and dual al:metric nature of the lot. Split into two floors, the proposal revolves around two dis- :nct rela:ons of use, based on the use of gaps/yards – whether exogenous or endogenous – corresponding to the type of program which they restrict (social or private). For the social areas of the habita:on, exogenous gaps/yards have been established to allow a plurality in the interior/ exterior rela:ons of the house, as well as to expand the habitable surface when the window frames are fully open.
The project for the FACOL industrial building started with the rehabilitation of an abandoned and obsolete pavilion, providing it with the proper work conditions for a textile dyeing facility. The second phase of the project consisted in the addition of a new volume to the already existent factory, creating a new building where all the administrative functions would take place.
The new office building was implanted on the south face of the existent volume, detached from it and separated by a vertical garden, which isolates any disturbance noise prevenient from the factory facilities.
The Box XL Houses is a seven houses development arranged in a diverse way, creating different relationships with the environment. The aim was to achieve a balance between the “constructed” and the “natural”, between the “mass” and the “void” so that these two antagonistic realities would form a peaceful and continuous dialogue, enhancing each other. The idea adopted in the project and the division of the lots was carried out to allow the creation of space between the constructed mass, thus obtaining a visual permeability with the landscape.
The program consisted on the rehabilitation of an existent construction which, given its state of degradation, functioned only as support for the agricultural activity, however, it was necessary to consider an area for housing. The existent construction consisted of an area of traditional stone masonry walls and a late addition of poor characteristics and state of conservation in plastered brick walls. We’ve opted to demolish the latter in order to highlight the original features of the stone volume. In the farm existed also other traditional constructions of great interest such as a granary, a mill, a tank and a stone threshing floor.
With a 3100m2 of covered area, the Gymnastic Training Center of Guimarães is located at the East limit of the city park and was conceived for practice and training of high performance gymnastics.
We propose a building with a unique image for the campus. A building that breaks the existing gray monotony – referring not only about the pictorial issue of the Campus, but also about the “global crisis without end” – and that, at the same time, is able to captivate.
Project: IBS – Institute of Science and Innovation for Bio-Sustainability
Location: Minho University, Azurém Campus, Guimarães, Portugal
Photography: Joao Morgado
Client: Minho University
Collaborators: Carine Pimenta, Catarina Campos, João Pereira de Sousa, Pedro Resende
3ds: Gil Soares
Engineering: Isabel Teles (structure), João Cunha (waters), António Pelaez (termic/energy), Susana Sousa (acoustic), Fernando Ferreira (electricity), Carlos Mirra (security plan)
Specifications, measurements and budgets: DIMSCALE
Levitation over the history of Portugal, is the concept of the project that inspires young people of Guimarães in areas such as multimedia and film, increasing experimentation with new technologies integrated in culture, introducing the concept of a learning center Portugal.
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