Building 4, ISCTE-IUL

The building centralizes research activities, advancing ISCTE’s goal of becoming a top research university. It offers flexible workspaces, labs, and collaborative areas designed to foster innovation, knowledge transfer, and community engagement. A new upper floor hosts advanced training and PhD programs, promoting interaction between researchers and students. The project seeks a holistic campus experience by balancing the creation of a new public garden with the introduction of a renewed material and constructive identity, reinforcing spatial continuity and urban integration.

The rehabilitation program of the existing buildings—including structural reinforcement, the addition of a new floor, reconfigured access, natural light optimization, and parking provision—introduced new spatial dynamics, constructive qualities, and urban design. Architecture and the city are shaped by permanence, yet as ever-changing entities, they require ongoing reconstruction and repair. The temporality of the new infrastructure reflects a transitional moment: building new conditions upon inherited ones. In the new ISCTE Knowledge and Innovation building, the aim was to adapt to a new era, a new program, and the possibilities offered by contemporary materials and construction systems—seeking balance between openness to innovation and the enduring values of long-term continuity. Building or rebuilding requires prior assessment. ISCTE’s new campus infrastructure expands teaching and research, rehabilitates spaces, and reconnects the university with the city.

The project respects the original layout of the previous buildings, maintaining their recessed position along Avenida das Forças Armadas. It involves partial demolition and structural reinforcement of the existing regular reinforced concrete frame with precast lightweight slabs. It adds new vertical concrete elements to the façades, connected by roof-level beams, enabling an additional floor. It rebuilds façades with a ventilated wall system: exposed ceramic brick, air layer, thermal insulation, and double gypsum board interior finish. It installs anodized aluminum windows with thermal break, set on blue stone sills. The construction prioritizes durability, flexibility, and energy efficiency through passive and active solar systems, centralized technical management, and water reuse. It converts a former parking area into a public urban garden, enhancing permeability and integrating the ISCTE campus into the city.