The context in its distances, alignments, proportions, define the mass. The program determines the project. A meeting centre for large gatherings or small groups. The ceiling, in its variations and geometry answers the program. A complete horizontal clearness outlines the space as a whole, which as atmosphere opposes to the weight of the vertical voids. The support functions deepen the external and peripheral wall. The final image is determined by the interaction of internal space and occupied façade.
The challenge for this design consisted on transforming a pre-existing warehouse into the headquarters of a law firm with 350 employees. The main objective was to maintain the volumetric logic of the existing building while renovating it into a modern office.
Both buildings, north and south, were recovered maintaining the original architecture. The central modules, in a deteriorated state, were redesigned and rebuilt with a more contemporary image, contrasting with the rest of the building while simultaneously answering the client’s needs.
NOVERCA is a project of a multisensory space for the students of Maria Veleda School, in Portugal, and is the result of a process begun about five years ago together with the direction of the school. They wanted to create an autonomous space for multiple handicapped students and there was a lack of resources and founds to actually realize it.
A few years earlier the government had made the decision to integrate all multiple handicapped students in schools without ever creating the necessary conditions for them to have an autonomous teaching space and adapted to their limitations. Ideally these students would have two or three subjects together with the others, and in the rest of the time they would have individual accompaniment in their own space with sensorial equipment. It may be relevant to point out that among all the schools in the country it is extremely rare to have this kind of spaces that certainly facilitate the integration of these students.
The unsuitable proportion obtained by using the square shape of its 18x18m area with a maximum height of 28 m determined the search for a solution that would counteract this. The use of the building structure itself, making it visible in its perimeter elements in addition to the stairway and elevator box, provided the solution for this vertical direction through the execution of a high blade set, with perfect articulation between the structural component and the architectural design
The task was to remodel an existing single floor residence, part of a semi-detached house, and to build an-other floor. Building regulations demand to leave 3m to the limits, even to the line that divides the plot and the building in the middle, so only part of the building could be lifted up. Our aim was to create something that is still part of the original building, especially because the other half would not be altered, but also to go one step further, giving the new part a contemporary look and distinguish it from the old.
The three pre-existing buildings around a mediterranean courtyard are located Coimbra, in the city’s UNESCO World Heritage Protection Zone.
In such delicate surroundings, the intervention seeks a sensible design balanced between the need for technical adaptations to contemporary building demands, the legal requirements for a contemporary hotel and the huge care that an intervention of this type requires. In other words, the adaption to the new program and the consequent deep intervention by all means paid deep respect for the historical relevance of the buildings and its great architectural and constructive values.
The FAMA restaurant is the first gastronomic project of chef Luis Lavrador.
Located in a recent building, in a relatively new zone of the city of Aveiro, this restaurant aims to be a meeting point, a place for lingering over a meal, and a reference.
Lingering was the word that guided this intervention from the very beginning. The chef wanted a restaurant where the clients would feel at home, where comfort was imperative so that the senses could be unleashed for the moment of savoring.
Architectural Project to increase the headquarters building of PRF – Gás, Tecnologia e Construção, S.A. which arises from the need to expand its administrative, warehouse and workshop areas.
The proposal considers the restructuring of the existing building, built in 2001. The building has the same functions, distributed in three floors. For the construction of the new building, right next to the first one, the existing functions have been extended by floor: workshops on the ground floor, storehouse on the middle floor and offices on the upper floor.
The project’s starting point was a group of existing buildings, whose interiors were in an advanced state of degradation, in some cases even in ruins. These buildings were united so as to create a new dwelling.
The project aimed to change the buildings’ exterior appearance as much as possible, while conserving and recovering the exterior walls. The interiors were redesigned according to the requirements of contemporary dwellings. The intention was to regenerate without being misrepresented, requalifying spaces that were “dead”, and integrating them with new spaces.
The reconstitution of the timeline shows that, in fact, we are not facing a building, but two buildings that have evolved into a single building. The initial building may have been erected in the late 14th or 15th centuries. Surely, it could only have been erected only after the “opening” of Rua Nova, or Rua Formosa (now Rua do Infante), ordered by D. João I (1357-1433). During the period “almadino” gained this neoclassical facade. In the twentieth century the pair Carlos Loureiro and Padua Ramos designed a modernist staircase of extreme elegance. When it came to us, all we had to do was to respect all these layers that had struck a remarkable balance there. It was a bank. Before that there were many things: offices, insurance firms, warehouse. Someone’s house in the early days. Now it’s a hotel. We do not know tomorrow. We know, however, that whoever comes next will continue to be able to recognize this timeline in the building. And if all goes well, you will not realize that we were there.
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