The commission is part of a macro urban plan to redesign the seafront of Esmoriz and Cortegaça. The intervention area is Praça das Companhas, the tail-end of the main access axis that reaches the beach, and representative space for“Arte Xávega”, an activity that shaped the development of the community and the built territory. The project appears on two levels. First, to enhance the fishing activity through the creation of a dynamic program. Second, to qualify the seafront, not only by returning the visual relationship that is now non-existent, but also with the renaturalization of the dune, with programs such as surf, tourism, and restaurants, which can and should coexist with fishing activity.

Thus, the proposal is characterized by a simple gesture on three levels: a raised platform that restores the views towards the sea; an intermediate level next to the seawall and access to the beach; and the lowest level related to the street. Consecutively, this action is divided into 3 zones: north, the end of Avenida da Praia with the viewpoint tower and a new square that works as a transitional hinge between the 3 levels of the route; the central one, with a built volume in concrete, with a constant and adaptable metric, allowing
a flexible and floodable program such as a market, lockers, public restrooms, and parking, while at the higher level, a promenade route is related to the sea; to south, the building is crowned with a volume that houses a bar/restaurant and shop/surf school, defining the access to the beach, and making the transition between the dune and the wooden fishermen’s support equipment. Morphologically, both volumes of concrete and wood, besides corresponding
to specific urban programs and dynamics, are not unrelated, respectively, to the solid wall that withstands the weather, as well as to the haystacks and the local cooperage activity.

The plot aimed for intervention is a corner on Av. Fernão Magalhães, one of the main urban arteries of Porto, which is characterized by its morphological heterogeneity. The plot’s surroundings are composed of buildings with dissonant architectural languages built throughout the 20th century, as well as a discrepancy of scales, namely in the transition with its transversal axes, predominantly defined by single- family typologies of the 19th century, a situation exacerbated by the strictness of the regulations in the urban corners’ transitions.

The proposal is a formal and typological laud for this confluence of apparently belligerent realities, which intends to prove the possibility of their coexistence in harmony, always in close relationship with the place.

Planimetrically, two typological actions are defined, physically separated: a collective housing block that forms the corner
and extends 15 meters on the transversal street, subverting the regulations and solving the inevitable altimetric transition; a set of
3 houses that evoke the collective memory of the single-family typology predominant on the street.

Altimetrically, 3 formal and material moments are presented: on the first level, an in situ concrete base that defines the intervention area; on a second level, facades in prefabricated concrete that dialogue with the construction period with granite of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, namely on the 2 floors of the houses’ facade and on the 3 floors of the protected building to the north; on the last level, an expanded metal sheet facade, in a more contemporary language, turned to the 21st century.

The entire building is designed using a rigorous metric that organizes the interior spaces and is reflected in the facades. The main stairwell coils in height, connecting to the north facade on the residential floors, allowing the social spaces and bedrooms to face the common patio to the south, or east and west, while kitchens and sanitary facilities face mainly north.

The exciting challenge of designing an isolated building from scratch with four facades is quickly faced with a set of bureaucratic and contextual constraints. Between the implantation design defined by the new urban plan in force, the barrack’s views annulment intention of the National Defense, the interference of the patrimony in the material and formal options, and the profitable and programmatic demands of the real estate developers, there was limited space for a vision that responds to the circumstances of the place.

Despite the complexity of the process, the proposal
seeks to synthesize the underlying problems, presenting itself diagrammatically simple. As a first action, the vertical circulations were placed in the north torsion area, creating a hinge element that divides the building altimetrically and typologically into two volumes. In the west volume, are the entrances to the building and a column
of Simplex apartments with three fronts. In the east volume, a commercial space on the ground floor that faces the new square and three columns of duplex apartments on half floors.

Access to the apartments is via exterior galleries that bring the light from the north into the infrastructural spaces while the bedrooms and living rooms face south, a solution that is not unrelated to Aldoar’s ascendancy. In turn, the altimetric shift enhances permeability that guarantees transversal ventilation and adds formal richness to the spaces, particularly on the corner’s last floors.

Morphologically, the proposal is a reflection of its typological organization and external circumstances, in a brutalist guise of concrete and brick that evokes the austerity of the monastery/ barrack. The north façade is cynical and belligerent, mirroring, on the one hand, the typological dichotomy, while hiding the inner truth in its walls and windows that are always the same. The south façade

is linear and transparent, extending in its clear lexicon to the west. The east façade is free and experimental, taking advantage of its unnecessary utility to bet on formal expression.

The purpose is the consolidation of a protected city block in the city center by stitching the requested use – housing – with the need of solving the scale disruption of the urban void to intervene.

Schematically, it is proposed a building composed by two volumes for each street with a jagged courtyard inside the block, with a central staircase that acts as a vital piece of the project, not only by its indelible impact in the space perception, but mainly because this
is the element that defines the buildings heights, consequently, all the altimetric relations with the surrounding, namely with cornices, eaves, mansards, balconies, windows height and granite socles.

The elevation metric, the tiles color and pattern choice, the distance between windows, as well as the design of the element itself – two casement opening with a fixed top panel limited by concrete pilasters – retains the association of the dynamics and tectonic character of Porto’s surrounding buildings. The place is the inexorable circumstance that dictates the formal lexicon.

The typological distribution – 4 apartments per floor – is intentionally hostage of the urban scale memory, in a morphological corollary that results in 4 volumes of 4 roof planes each, that evoke the 4 original plots, which composes the 5th project elevation. The ground floor is physically and visually permeable, functioning as an intermediate space between public and private, the moment where commerce and housing merge together and the space where the streets connect. The apartments turn their social areas to the street while the private area take advantage of the central courtyard inmost character, assuring transversal ventilation.

An apartment located in the 1st floor of a multi-family housing block representative of the modernist architecture of the 50’s in the city of Porto. Exaggeratedly subdivided, disproportionately dimensioned, and functionally inadequate for nowadays, this space needed an organizational readjustment. Furthermore, it was clear an overlapping of constructive layers (pavements, coverings, ceilings and window frames), that disfigured the space asking for a depuration work.

The space had two elements that seemed important to reclaim: The first element was a structural mesh of tall beams appar- ently misadjusted with the interior organization, consequence of the unusual typological distribution of the building (with apartments of larger areas in the first floor and smaller áreas in the 4 floors above). The second element that was materially and formally worthy of preservation is the pine wood floor parquet in a herringbone pattern – some parts covered with new pavements, other parts completely replaced.

In a first phase, the space was reorganized and redimensioned: We totally reconfigured the kitchen and bathrooms; general layouts were completely redefined – in the social area we created a wid-
er space where before stood four divisions, and in private area we defined a master bedromm with bathroom and two secondary ones.

In a second phase – more empirical and in result of the dem- olitions – we clarified the intervention in correlation with the beams layout, whether released and disconnected from them, evoking the pre-existing compartiments, or guided by them in their new redistribution.