The site under study is part of the Serrinha Urbanization Plan, Rebordosa, where the City Council plans to build a multi-purpose exhibition park to publicize the city’s business activities in order to make business dynamics more competitive and that the City Hall intends to provide support and continuity in a strategic vision, with a broad influence beyond the territorial limits of the municipality of Paredes.

The Project defines an architectural solution with a vision of a building that, in addition to the strictly functional sense of a multipurpose business exhibition park, enables symbolic communication capable of being an important reference in communication and in adhering to environmental quality concerns, landscape and urban integration of the municipality of Paredes, in a contemporary perspective.

With the conception of this Project, it is intended to obtain a functional space that structures and values ​​an entire business area that the plan envisages and that is intended to be in fact the driving force of the high potential that this Municipality has been showing posible.

An interplay of volumes based on the repetition and grouping of a module was the theme behind this project. Owing to the demands of the programme and the constraints of the terrain, we arranged these modules around a central courtyard. The result was an irregular, dynamic and complex body, which created multiple and varied areas for play, reflection and learning.

The central courtyard presents itself as an empty space, a unifying element and a catalyst for experiences. In the words of Lao Tzu, it is the empty space that makes the wheel turn. Here it is the joint that connects and makes the body, apparently fragmented and comprising seemingly random volumes, unified. The glass has a double function: it enables the interior to turn outwards, extending its boundaries, while at the same time it marks and reveals the interplay and contrast of volumes that characterise this building.

Similarly, the interior reveals the same contrast of shapes and volumes, of areas for circulation and rest on the winding paths around the courtyard, which provides protection and brings the indoors out. Inside the colourful and bright classrooms the irregular roofs of the volumes that shape them are recreated, making these spaces distinctive, unique and distinguished, just as the children who attend this school.

Constructing on top of the already built is a challenge that is always presented to the architect and increasingly the new architecture. Rehabilitation, recovery and restoration of buildings or heritage are nowadays a fundamental field of work for the development of our profession. 

Architecture is always built on something that already exists; on a past, a territory, on a piece of land or a pre-existing building and never on a void or a shallow board. This school centre is an example of this. It is built on the basis of an existing school which has recovered and remained in its essence and only new modules, new accesses and different materials have been added. 

The Paredes School Centre arose from the need to restore and rehabilitate a school built on a prefabricated degraded structure which no longer had the quality and comfort to carry out its activity.

From the understanding of the recovery and expansion needs, it was proposed the addition of three new volumes capable of responding to the spatial and programmatic needs required and above all to be able to unify the entire volume without losing the existing pavilion matrix and which we seek to explore as a concept, image or identity for this new building. A volumetric composition based on a process of adding pure and juxtaposed volumes, with distinct identities and forms, associated to a subtle articulation of covers as and voids, accompanied by work on the creation of different exterior spaces and the composition of new covering materials, are the elements that characterise the intervention.

The aim is to create a school with its own personality and identity, using the existing elements, drawing a dynamic and stimulating silhouette to the whole set that wants to be renewed, updated and only for this reason different.

The Mouriz School is located on an industrial plot. It has a small façade overlooking the street, but reaches maximum expression lengthwise as a result of the constraints of the land. 

From this markedly orthogonal building, there is a zigzagging line that constructs and defines its entire façade. This creates an outward three-dimensionality and a quasi cinematographic language made from wood, whose design stems from the tradition of the place.

It is a building that marks the land, that stands out and contaminates its surroundings with its own identity carved out in the landscape. Its strong visual expression is linked to the movement and silhouette of its façade, and the way the windows are etched into it as if it were a musical score. A melodic line that gains substance and, through apparent repetition, earns its own identity. In contrast, its extremities are hollow and can be seen as two large eyeglasses gazing over the landscape, projecting the inside outwards and thus removing its physical barriers.

A school as a route, open to many encounters.

Standing on a promontory, with a unique view of its surroundings, is the Vilela school. Like a temple, this building has a strong presence in the built environment, giving it structure and a point of reference.

Given the location and its prominence in the landscape, the design of this school was influenced by a desire for transparency. It was therefore designed as a glass body that is dominated by a sinuous roof, which simultaneously unifies, integrates and characterises the entire structure.

With its strikingly dramatic design, this school represents the search for a degree of de-materialisation of the structure. This is achieved through the use of glass, which creates a flexible, almost graphic line of light and shadow that typifies the entire façade of this school.

It has its own language that veers away from a need for consensus and passiveness. The aim is to achieve a school that stands out, an active space that is open to participation and change, thus stimulating, developing abilities and awakening feelings. It is a flexible space, open to the local community and their future appropriation of it.

This school was designed as a playful combination of modules that can be easily adapted to the variations of the terrain and the topography of the place. It develops the concept established in the modular schools project (CEM – Centros Escolares Modulares) and revisits the original objective where the movement, variation and formal complexity of the exterior contrast with the linearity of the interior planes that structure the functional areas.

Given the shape of the terrain, its orientation, sun exposure, accesses and relationship with the urban structure, it was possible to maximise the expression of the interplay between the modules that make up the different spaces of this school. The idea of continual movement created by the paths surrounding the central courtyard seeks to characterise the image of the project and the use of this building.

Here a number of concepts of composition and organisation of space are explored and experimented with. The plane and mass are the basis for constructing volumes, verticality meets horizontality, and the senses of surprise and compression are fostered through the countless spaces that the freely associated modules create.

More than just providing an acritical sense of stability, the project for this school invites both children and adults to continually experiment and confront. This is what truly makes it a place of learning.

The school centre in Rebordosa is designed around a central courtyard. A sober and distinctive volume that contrasts with a place full of references, shapes and colours. The school is thought of as a redoubt of containment and integration, a reference point for other and different architectures that are experienced and that confront each other here.

The method of composition was not one of adding volumes, or plans, or other elements for the construction of the whole that makes up the shape of the building. On the contrary, we started from a stable element, a rectangular shape that the contingencies and setbacks of the terrain acted as a real condition for the definition of its implantation.

In this way, the process of conception and construction of form became almost sculptural. The pure, enclosed and raw volume is carved into the matter, searching for the essential, adjusting, cutting and adapting parts to make the whole emerge.

In this game of subtraction, spaces are created, spans are torn, the body is given to an architecture made of light and shadow. It is in this context that the courtyard appears, in the centre of the building and over which the remaining spaces develop. It is from this desire to create diversified spaces that the covered outdoor playgrounds emerge, watching over those who pass by and guarding those who shelter in them. From the vertical incisions in the walls, light emerges to the inside, reflecting the life and colour that the concrete walls contain, revealing a little of the fluid and colourful interior space, contradicting the denser and more closed image of the outside.

Project of execution for remodelling and interior arrangement of the Parish Church of S. Pedro, with new churchyard and parish centre and sacristy design and conception of interior furniture, baptismal font, ambo, altar; intervention area 1.570 m2, Factory of the Parish Church of Parada de Todeia, Sobreira, Paredes (work finished in 2010).

O projeto para o centro escolar de Duas Igrejas afigura-se como um subtil jogo de contrastes e de oposições. Se por um lado possui um exterior geométrico em betão aparente, com a frieza e rugosidade próprias deste material, apresenta no interior um espaço depurado, fluido, claro e polido. À linearidade da composição e organização funcional da planta do edifício se contrapõe todo um jogo de volumes que se estruturam alinhados ao longo de um corredor central que lhe empresta unidade e ritmo mas também variedade e surpresa. 

A fachada denuncia uma rigorosa métrica que serviu de base à conceção do projeto, em que as linhas de cofragem no betão encontram-se definidas e demarcadas no alçado como registo de um tempo e de um processo de produção e construção. O interior pontuado por rasgos de luz que separam os secos volumes que compõem as salas de aula desenham um jogo de claro/escuro diferenciador. 

O corredor central revela-se como espinha dorsal, um espaço de circulação e de estar que articula e organiza os diferentes módulos que compõem este edifício, num mundo imaginativo e de brincadeira, mas que ao mesmo tempo procura oferecer valores, conhecimento e aprendizagem. No fundo mais do que formas, projetamos espaços para colocar questões.