architecture now and The Future: ARX

The existent school is located in the outskirts of Caneças, Odivelas, in a territory of intense discontinuities.

The proposal is structured beginning in a double interpretation of the learning concept: formal learning and informal learning.

Those two types are translated in the building in two different architectural approaches, maintaining a dialogue between them.

In consequence, the stiffness of the existent blocks, where the class rooms are placed, are structured like “learning machines”, in contrast with the informality of the new parts, enabling the “informal learning “in the collective spaces.

Considering that in the school, every spaces are teaching spaces, that each one as its own importance, the organization and articulation between spaces is meant to fluid, with physical and visual permeability.

Thanks to organization of space that exudes an attitude to learning and creativity, leading to the willing of learn through space.

The human relations and activities are, in the end, in the base of all knowledge.

From a tectonic point of view, the solutions adopted give the building an idea of matter unity and grant the space an elementary and abstract character.

Location: Caneças, Portugal
Architects: ARX
Principals In Charge: Nuno Mateus and José Mateus
Project Team: Ricardo Guerreiro, Fábio Cortês, Ana Fontes, João Dantas, Sofia Raposo, Mariana Sá, Emanuel Rebelo, Diana Afonso, Miguel Torres, Filipe Cardoso, Bruno Martins, Marc Anguill, Gaia Pelizzari, Rodrigo Henriques
Landscape Architects: Traços na Paisagem
Graphic Design: Pedro Falcão
Engineerings: SAFRE, Estudos e Projectos de Engenharia Lda; PEN Engenharia; CTQ, Lda.; SOLGEN; GEOTEST
3D Modeling: Traços na Paisagem
Area: 11,600 sqm
Client: Parque Escolar EPE
Photographs: FG+SG – Fernando Guerra

01-Ílhavo-Maritime-Museum-Extension-by-ARX

The codfish aquarium connects two other buildings and sets and a complex built ensemble, united around the subjects of the sea and fishing.

02-Ílhavo-Maritime-Museum-Extension-by-ARX

In this unusual structure, the Maritime Museum is the place of memory, the Aquarium the space for marine life and CIEMAR, installed in the old renovated school, the research center for the activities of man linked to the sea.

03-Ílhavo-Maritime-Museum-Extension-by-ARX

In articulating these three units the building is both an autonomous urban equipment that relates to the context and defines a public space, but it is also a building-path, which develops in a spiral around the tank as it connects the Museum to the old school.

04-Ílhavo-Maritime-Museum-Extension-by-ARX

In a context of small scattered houses, it is shaped by the interstices of this urban domestic fabric and establishes a new public domain.

05-Ílhavo-Maritime-Museum-Extension-by-ARX

But in doing so it breaks into two horizontally overlapping bodies searching for a scale of transition.

06-Ílhavo-Maritime-Museum-Extension-by-ARX

In its proposed matter duality, the white concrete body emerges from the ground and sets the basis for defining a square.

07-Ílhavo-Maritime-Museum-Extension-by-ARX

The floating black body of metal scales sets the height of the square, in a public urbanity redefined into three dimensions. At the heart of the building we find the fish and the sea.

08-Ílhavo-Maritime-Museum-Extension-by-ARX

The visitor´s path is a spiraling ramp, a journey that begins in suspension over the tank, to turn into a diving mode of gradual discovery, an experience of immersion in the cod habitat.

09-Ílhavo-Maritime-Museum-Extension-by-ARX

The informal auditorium, with extensive visibility into the aquarium, marks a pause in the visit for contemplation and information about the life of this species.

10-Ílhavo-Maritime-Museum-Extension-by-ARX

All technical components of control are placed in the basement, guaranteeing a subliminal operation of all the life support systems, the quality of the seawater, the control of air temperature and even the new reserves of the Maritime Museum.