ICP (Portugal s Communication Institute Northern Quarters)

The lot stands in the periphery of the town subdue to a fast process of transformation. The weakness of the urban fabric shows difficulties in the articulation between the elements that give character to this heterogeneous occupation (agriculture, industries, services, lodging). The architectonic disqualification of this area occurs above all from the mischaracterization of the interposed spaces - remained areas where any design strategy is absent. The site, near a small farm nucleous, is located between a social housing complex and agriculture fields. The alignment of the street and the choice of a volume equivalent to those of the neighbourhood constructions are devices that, when linked with the reduced dimension of the program, support the landing of relations to establish between lot and building. The project makes them undissociable: to the performance in the first corresponds the neutrality of the second.

This performance is much more noticed when the building is placed on the lot in a way that its own limits should be read forward. That s why the design of the building results also from the (re)design of the ground itself in the way that respiring times are established in the approach to the building, helping to fix a scale to the whole.

The organic relation between building and lot is essentially designed from its way of mutual assumption. And also by the way how in the interior of the building the compromise with the surrounding garden is read, also present at the arrangement of the program - at the vertical line, establishing the connection with the ground (basement), designing the elevation volume (working/servicing areas), and defining the upper top (unable covering); at the horizontal line it establishing a hierarchy of spaces seeking the best solar exposition in the working areas and in its visual relation with the outside. Such arrangement although perceptible in the volume configuration doesn t deny, but reinforces the individual character of its conception.