Ana Paula House occupies a narrow plot on a major urban thoroughfare with a 6.4 m frontage onto the street. The house comprises an east/west linear solution on 4 levels, with a garage and roof terrace. The scale of neighbouring buildings is respected; the first floor window opening is of similar size and scale, but the increased height of the facade and its clean stone finish allows it to come to life as an individual vertical element.

The simplicity of the street facade provides a clue to the inward-looking organisation within – this really is a private dwelling. The rooms and circulation are arranged around a focal lightwell, which illuminates all domestic levels of the building down to the first floor. Again verticallity becomes the organising factor.

The home is entered from the street through a recessed wooden door spanning the width of the building. This “free plan” suggests the continuous space of the garage and access stairs behind it, which turns into a small back garden at the rear. The dwelling spaces are elevated behind the more solid and protective facade.

The third floor balcony spans the facade providing views of the street and city, and access to the habitable roof space. Service areas are organised to the rear allowing the dwelling areas to free up horizontally and vertically.

The initial design proposal for his manufacturer of faucets (CIFIAL) began with the structural conception of neutrality and constructive efficiency. This became a mode of operation for the entire project. The single volume tries to integrate all the needs and demands of the production areas and social areas, optimising the accesses and minimizing the distribution circuits.

Situated in a partially completed industrial estate, it didn’t seem necessary to establish references to the context, nor to the prefabricated units still existing on the site. They were not a factor capable of inspiring any kind of architectural or referential starting point. There is no evident relationship between the interior and exterior of the project, and this separation superimposes the autonomy of the place.

The building works like a compact, single volume, continuous and never ending, without place yet sensitive to the events that occur at the accesses, the loading-bays, the entrances, the exits, and conscious and almost weary of the expressive machines and communication links. Without “creative” drawing architecture is created, where its identity denies anonymity and results from a direct and permanent confrontation between content and contender. In response to this confrontation, the volume expresses itself as continuous, while the machines, the infrastructures, the vacuum cleaners, the technical places, become symbolic in theirs permanence. Therefore the place becomes specific to the whole program thar justifies its design.

The entrance is set in a corner of the volume, almost breaking its formal unit, but emphasizing its location in a volume without references. The accesses and layout of interior space are organized according to the production method. Next to the main entrance, there are two service entrances and discharges and one transportation hanger. Inside, the building is divided along a longitudinal axis, separating the production and administrative zones. The latter is organised into three different blocks: reception, administration, and personnel. The corridor that joins them actually unites them. The structure is a steel portal frame, supporting the roof and outer corrugated metallic cladding; the administrative zones inside are constructed from reinforced concrete with brick cladding.

The creation of the CERCI School was for the purpose of education, reintegration and professional training for people with disabilities. The approximate total area of 7,000 sq.m is divided into four sectors:

• preschool/infants and Special School
• education and rehabilitation for high levels of disability
• training in professional skills for reintegration into schools and offices (tailoring, loksmithing, carpentry, model-making and bookbinding)
• secure employment for disabled people with professional skills of a high standard (locksmithing, tapestry, floristy).

The initial project began as a study, but the persistance of the many people who supported the building, and the need for it, succeeded in turning it into a live project.

The developed solution, its template, the number of floors and the area of the footprint of the different volumes grew with increasing needs, each time re-articulating the programme. The final design provided the chance for phased construction tailored towards a slow release of funding, creating autonomous spaces that garanteed greater flexibility of use during construction.

The solution is based on the construction of a linear floor with a distribution corridor running its length, from where the various sectors of the programme are distributed. The corridor runs north/south in accordance with the topography of the land.

It is at a level that eliminates the need for stairways and establishes contact with two surrounding roads.

This project resulted from the need to renovate a home that had fallen into disrepair after the construction of a four-storey building on the north side of it, and was restrained by a limited budget.

It was not the original intent to construct a building of these dimensions. The scheme that the planning officials enforced insisted on a construction of a volume with 4 floors, even though the original budget only provided for the transformation of the old house.

The location of the site was very prominent in the city, and the solution was based on a logic of volumetric continuity and contention. The intention was to build two homes for the family with some identity and sense of contemporary design, in spite of the limited means.

The ground floor contains the garage, the first floor a two-bedroomed residence for the parents, with the third and fourth floors a three-bedroomed home in a duplex, designed with minimal circulation space. Areas that are important to the functioning of this specific family are integrated into the design.

The eyeglass window frames the sea.

The facade is first divided and then elements are subtracted, such as curvilinear motifs, and complete forms. In the final composition, only the off-centre elements remain, with non-existent intersections. The rear facade is a negative representation of it and the central area is designed to let light in.

A curvilinear concave movement limited by a massive porch, marks and defines the design of the facade communicating strong bonds with the interior. The emptiness of the surface is a permanent question about the social function of the architecture.

The project is situated in an urban area currently undergoing transformation and is intended to maintain continuity with buildings constructed in the vicinity.

A compatibility study took place examining the templates and alignments of other buildings, for confirmation.

Occupying a plot on an intersection, a volume is projected, a box that opens up and closes without drawing references to the new constructions.

A small risk was taken in giving the apartments luxuriously sized circulation spaces,allowing for homes of various styles, but maintaining a clear and contained external image, differentiated by the functions and living spaces.

The south limit is totally glazed and is where the bedrooms and the living rooms are located. The whole north side of the building contains the services, the kitchens, the stairways and the courtyard, with access to the east.

The external panels, in marine ply, guarantee visual unity and protect the building.

The rhythm of the facade is set by the elements that comprise it,giving the volume a compact and methodical character; unified when the panels are shut; varied when open.

There is something dynamic about the image of this building where the travertine confronts the slatted panels marking the facade.The homes are now occupied, but the pedagogic process,the understanding, the use and the appropriation of spaces is still continuing.The project does not in itself contain any absolute truth, just uncertainties,hypotheses thrown down,desires to try, which, in motion, are conquered and verified by their very existence.

The Centro Multimeios de Espinho was a project carried out between 1998 and 2000. It is a space intended to welcome and integrate different artistic, scientific and communication expressions, which new technologies and current communication media enable and support. 

This building is a symbol of a tradition that connects Espinho to the sea and thus pays discrete homage to the past growth of a city which has always left many of its tears in this vast salty sea. It is a building that seeks to interpret the scale and dimension of today within a large, boat-like container. Its interior reveals a large sculptural space, a uniting void, organising and distributing a complex and ambitious programme. Here spaces intersect to provide a large scale cinema, a scientific and leisure planetarium, an exhibition gallery suitable for a variety of artistic expressions, a multi-purpose conference room as well as all the service spaces such as the administrative areas, the dressing rooms, the storage facilities, the cafeteria, the multimedia shop and the spaces for new information technologies.

The copper that time will paint green will mark its various ages and expressions. We thought of the building as a friend who we would like to accompany and grow old with.