An oversized house is barely a house. the very long narrow plot used to accommodate shabby offices and a spacious warehouse. a fearless client aimed at transforming this clutter into a home. a soon-to-be living room could easily have a dozen cars parked in there.

The structure of the existing building suggests two parts. a conventional front facing the street is an object on its own that has a dull facade, two levels and a disarray of rooms, while the back part is a vast space under a gable roof supported by heavy wooden beams.

The project is conceived as a series of cuts across the lengthy perimeter. five facets are reassessed and introduced to order the extensive space. The two parts are now separated by an inner courtyard. The building in front takes in a series of small apartments, dividing the space with several slight gestures. The warehouse simply turns into a massive living room that is then interrupted by one curved wall. A proper kitchen and a monumental fireplace are the only hints of uncertain domesticity.

La entrada House with Many Faces se publicó primero en Global Spaces.

The setting for the new school was based on two essential conditions. The first condition was that it had to be as close as possible to the old school for reasons of mobility. The second condition was that the dance studios had to have a clear relationship with the outside space, as a mental and physical release strategy for the dancers.

The Site

By coincidence, less than 50 meters away from the old school there was a vacant lot. This lot, with a reduced area and inserted in a non-consolidated sector of the city, where collective housing buildings, public garden space and agricultural land coexists, characterizes a hybrid context where trees manage to be the great protagonists. The setting of the building sought the maximum areas allowed, in which the geometry of the lot limits became the mold that gave origin to the architectural volume, the position of openings look for the trees that discipline the so desired views over the outside.

The Program

The compatibilization between there quirements of the mandatory spaces to belong to the public dance education network, with the restrictions imposed by the urbanistic legislation concerning areas, was the main problem to be solved. The spatial solution is based on the geometric configuration of the lot’s limits, a trapezoid made up of a rectangleand two right-angled triangles. The rectangular spaces form the boundaries ofthe main dance spaces, the studios and the changing rooms. The triangular spaces form the limits of the service and circulation spaces. This compactness of the program made it possible to create double-height spaces that communicate visually with each other through large interior windows that double the spatial sensation. The openings placed at the vertices of the triangles allow the green exterior of the garden to always be the main setting in the circulation spaces.

The Idea

The desire for architecture and dance to merge into a common art. In which the rigor and the rules that discipline the rigid limits of the matter of form and the form of space, evoke the beauty of the body in movement. To complete the dance stage we can only thank the assiduous presence of the trees as attentive spectators of the show.

Text provided by the architect.

La entrada Ballet School se publicó primero en Global Spaces.

The work, of the still called Quinta do Mitra, is an integral part of the project for the Campanhã’s Bus Terminal (TIC). Its outer space is an integral part of, as well as an extension of the public natural park that already involves all this intervention. It goes from the south area, next to the Ceres Factory, and it extends along the entire TIC building, stretching eastwards to Rua do Bonjoia up to the site of the former Quinta do Mitra, with access via a pedestrian bridge, at the north end of the TIC complex. The pre-existing building of an extensive Quinta that was, over time, successively and very closely involved by large mobility infrastructures (the railway, the ring road and now the TIC), was completely abandoned, not fully functional, in ruins and in an advanced state of structural degradation, close to collapse.

The TIC project envisaged its reconstruction in order to make it a functional building, to confer an urban sense to it and make it an active player in the new functional and infrastructural surrounding context. The architectural proposal focused on the integral preservation of the existing stone walls, maintaining the condition in which they were found, the appearance of a ruin, reconfiguring their spaces for a new programmatic and multipurpose functionality: Transformed it into a municipal services building, complying with the new spatial, constructive and infrastructural requirements.

La entrada Quinta do Mitra se publicó primero en Global Spaces.

A tiny palace in a narrow garden. The luxuriant environment suggested an ambivalent approach to the architectural object. At human height, the palace is transparent, but its crown is proud, adorned with precious stones, and spanning across the perimeter walls.

La entrada Very tiny palazzo se publicó primero en Global Spaces.