In an industrial lot, that due to its position in the articulation between an avenue and a structuring roundabout, is a corner of local relevance, it was implanted an industrial unit of fabrics production.
Given the relevance of the reading of the lot in relation to the roundabout, a building was created that enlarges it and that translates into the articulation between two fundamental and complementary structures. One is the large production nave, a parallelepiped of large dimensions, to which some much smaller ones are attached and host the production support services and employees. The other smaller one, which leans against it and hosts the administrative services spread over two floors, has a strong architectural expression, as if it were a reptile’s head. It is located at the East/South vertex of the Unit and facing the roundabout, it becomes the expressive face of the complex, its brand image.
House 2 was built as a complement to an existing house from the end of the 19th century. It works as a kind of annex building or garden pavilion. Located at the far end of the property, it is also a backdrop for the garden. Its communal space is a generous double-height winter garden, which ensures the transition between the intimacy of the rooms and the outdoor space.
The project consists of an urban renewal intervention in an abandoned area along the railway Northern Line, between the Santa Apolónia and Xabregas stations. This parcel had an industrial use and consisted of a set of two buildings and a vacant lot owned by IP Património. The intervention involved converting this area into a co-living of the Smart Studios brand, which offers small functional studios in a condominium, with all facilities included (TV, Internet), kitchenette, private bathroom, and other amenities such as outdoor pool, gym and laundry.
Opened on September 21st of 1952, the construction of the Famalicão Municipal Market had a dual purpose: on one hand to decongest the old fairgrounds (nowadays D. Maria II Square) and on the other hand to make a more pleasant space with better hygienic conditions.
After a golden period, the Market presented itself, at the date of the intervention, as an obsolete space without a dynamic capacity to attract new and diversified consumers.
Tags: Portugal, Vila Nova de Famalicão Comments Off on Vila Nova de Famalicão Municipal Market Rehabilitation Project in Portugal by Rui Mendes Ribeiro
Formalized as a geometric and abstract city, built by large yellow cubes, the Nadir Afonso Temporary Museum is an open and fluid space that seeks to create numerous visual and conceptual relationships with the work of the abstractionist artist and Portuguese architect.
Article source: Germano de Castro Pinheiro Arquitectos
The greatest challenge of the project development, was the guiding intent to respect and recover the ancient memory of the site, reconciling it with the intervention we were to carry out.
On the site existed a 16th century construction that had been adulterated by successive additions, made throughout the 20th century, without any architectural or historical significance. In consequence, the first gesture was to identify and recover the original traces of this construction.
The house is located in the Southwest of Alentejo, deep in the Grandola hills. The gently undulating topography contrasts with the harsh dryness of the landscape and its bare vegetation of cork and holm oaks with sparse bushes creeping from the calcareous soil.
Given its remoteness and isolation, the house echoes the tradition of the Portuguese alcáçova, or qasbah, following its Arab etymology, which functioned as a defensive citadel, or compound, with its constructions built within and protected by a high-walled perimeter. Poetically, it summons the Heideggerian notion of “bounded space”, of the human need to define a place of dwelling amidst the endlessness of the landscape. In fact, this typology of a fortified farm is the dominant form of occupation across the Maghreb and the Mediterranean, from Roman antiquity and Arab settlements, to Fernand Pouillon’s and Le Corbusier’s excursus in Argel.
Urbanistically, the plot meets two distinct scales. To the North, a scale of four and five storey buildings, to the South by the intersection of an access road to Rossio Park, after which the scale changes to a two-storey scale and single-family dwelling typology.
So that there are no flat and rigid gables and trying to relate to the various influences of the surroundings, we assume a rotation of the floors taking this displacement to four distinct elevations that cause particular movements and shadows.
The customers already owned the warehouse adjacent to the intervention area where the companies are based, but with its exponential growth the need to increase the physical space of the company became perennial.
The main challenges of this intervention were the interconnection of the two warehouses, in order to be able to seam the original space and the new space in the most fluid and natural way possible, and the creation of dynamics between the two companies, which although distinct, work synergistically.
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