Projects

The corner location of this house is both liberating for the form and restrictive in terms of privacy. Courtyards and alcoves are cut out of the imposed solid at different levels, breaking it up into multiple exterior surfaces that reflect the internal organization in half-storeys.

Breaking the volume in two creates two 'houses' above the shared common area occupying the entire ground floor. The 'house' for the owner couple is organized by split-levels and is further away from the street. The other 'house' is intended for the wider family, with two extra guest bedrooms above the kitchen and breakfast room and its own access stair. The interior lives in complicity with the exterior, a varied landscape of differently textured form, light and shadow, and a dense layer of vegetation enclosing the house.

A primary school extension and a day care centre are located next to an existing school. A new building provides the entrance for both schools. The school's adaptation to the sloping site is accentuated by two different floor-to-ceiling heights: a lower one for the classrooms and a higher one for common facilities such as the cafeteria, gym and library. In the classrooms, oriented to the north, there is a neutral and intimate atmosphere. In the common areas, washed by southern light and connected to the playgrounds, the large space is deliberately warm.

The generous size of central entrance area, which connects the two internal levels, allows for undefined uses. Outside, this connecting block expresses its ambiguity: part ramp, part playground.

The restaurant is located in a five-star hotel and serves Japanese food. Besides evoking traditional Japanese architecture through a raw and strong materiality, theatricality is created with two entrance tunnels and a raised arrival area. The amusing and seemingly irrational posture of the existing structure is underlined with white paint while an air of mystery is generated by dissolving the spatial boundaries with a permeable curtain, a translucent screen, and dark peripheral walls whose absorptive qualities also provide acoustic comfort.

Eduardo Souto de Moura's masterplan is designed to provide this small city with a new park and a new urban fabric with clearly defined features: 'modernity', continuous exterior spaces, a regular street and building pattern and homogeneous architectural treatment. Within this plan, aNC designed Oxygen Square, a community centre and a housing project for 42 flats. Designing a public building and the public space around it creates the opportunity to explore a shared architectural vocabulary. Several platforms, designed as modulations of the ground plane, open up the possibility of being in the public space and configuring both the building's exterior image and its main interior spaces and circulation. The challenge of the collective housing project is the normal one in the contemporary city: to create a good living environment with limited resources. The project doesn't attempt to be extravagant. It accepts the idea that each building is part of an ensemble.