Casa Dos Cubos, Tomar House, Portuguese Building Photos, Design Property Images

Casa Dos Cubos Portugal : Tomar Architecture

Tomar Development, Portugal design by E M B A I X A D A

3 Sep 2009

TOMAR ENVIRONMENTAL MONITORING AND INTERPRETATION OFFICES (EMIO)

Design: E M B A I X A D A

photos : DMF

Casa Dos Cubos

Synopsis
The Project is a conversion of a former rundown factory infrastructure that plays a relevant role in the urban context of the city of Tomar, although without any particular architectural interest.

Located at the beginning of the city historical centre, the building has been subjected to several attachments and changes over the years, finding itself threatened by some decadence and inadequate for the intended use. The new program comprises two distinct areas: a public area for Exhibitions, meetings and cafeteria and a private area consisting of Lecture rooms and accommodation for invited artists.

Confronted with the regulation plans, the design maintains the entire external perimeter construction, while its rundown interior is totally scooped out.

Therefore and due to the functional program, the new construction establishes itself as the anatomy of the existing building. The private areas are volumetrically defined within the structure, optimized for inhabitability, each with its own access, atmosphere, identity, shape, function and dimension. The Social life, exhibitions and meetings take place in the interstitial space around the new structure, and are characterized and organized by the programmatic events defined by the enclosed spaces.

Explanatory Report
Since the last decade of the xx century, it as been usual, especially in the old Europe, the commission of projects demanding the conservation, renovation and conversion of constructions from a recent and distant past and from the most diverse typologies, and cultural matrices – This interior architecture often becomes (for young practices in particular) by default a field of experimentation for architectural ideas and one of the most challenging themes of the contemporary city. Not only because of urban conditions but also because of historycal, social and political demands.

This preservation syndrome, sometimes leads to a overvaluation of the building structures. Age is not a warranty of architectural quality, on the contrary it is a natural process of selection. The adequacy to new and contemporary programs can be extremely liable to error. If in certain cases the possibility of adequacy is enrolled in the spatial identity of the building, in others the change of uses reveals itself inadequate, leading to an inconsistent meaning in the character of the building. Sometimes the preservation of the architecture we possess, can be, the worst manner of Destruction.(Ruskin).

The project is part of a nationwide and governmental program – the Polis programme. The strategy was to revive cities by introducing new equipment such as the Environmental Monitoring and Interpretation Offices (EMIO) buildings. The aim was for this projects to energize the rehabilitation of the city.

photos : DMF

The EMIO are public infrastructure for exhibition and other cultural events, concerning environmental and regional subjects.

The Project is a reconversion of a former rundown infrastructure that plays a relevant role in the social and urban context of the city of Tomar, although without any particular architectural interest. The city of Tomar was founded in 1161 by the Order of the Knights. This infrastructure was built as a storehouse for cereals belonging to the Knights Templar.

Located at the beginning of the city historical centre, the building has been subjected to several attachments and changes over the years, finding itself threatened by some decadence and inadequate for the intended use. Was adapted into a bank institution, an industrial storage and finally adapted into offices belonging to the city hall, with new walls, floors, and technical ceilings. Even though the building it’s protected under historic-preservation ordinances.

The new program comprises two distinct areas: a public area for exhibitions, meetings and cafeteria and a private area consisting of Lecture rooms and accommodation for invited artists.

The spaces “born” from a visceral symbiosis and from the tension between this architectonic organism and the physical limits that keep him in captivity.

The existing building acquires a new interior reading, being reconfigured and transformed in a unitarian and hermetic space with the use of white mate paint and mate epoxy resin coating. For the organism that contaminates the interior it was created and developed a kind of skin. A materiality intended to be abstract and simultaneously expressionistic.

Through some kind of alchemy a substance was developed, a recipe, by conjoining some “ingredients”: Dark pigment, Acrylic resin and reflective glass spheres. The entrails of this animal were painted with glossy white paint and with glossy epoxy resin coating. A new interior within an interior interior.

photos : DMF

The most challenging and seductive in the design process was claiming and believing in the possibility of transforming the spatial structure in a laboratory. Seeking and testing solutions capable of answering to a particular project ideal, which inevitably diverge from the general processes of standarization.

A machine capable of producing space, installed in a shell that was progressively deflated and then insulated with a new and strange form of life.

Casa Dos Cubos Tomar – Building Information

CASA DOS CUBOS
TOMAR ENVIRONMENTAL MONITORING AND INTERPRETATION OFFICES (EMIO)

Invited Competition: * 1st Prize
Client: Tomar Polis S.A.
Location: Tomar, Portugal
Site Area: 980,34 m²
Budget: 490.000,00 €

PROJECT DATA AND CREDITS

PROJECT AND LOCATION: Centro de Monitorização e Interpretação Ambiental (CMIA)
Praça Alves Redol nº 5 -Tomar, Portugal
INTERVENTION MANAGEMENT: ATKINS International Limited
COMPETITION DATE: Jul 2003 / Aug 2003 (1º Prize)
PROJECT DATE: Oct 2003 / Jan 2005
CONSTRUCTION DATE: Nov 2005 / Dec 2006
FLOOR AREA: 980,34 m2
BUDGET: 452.599,99 €

ARCHITECTURE: EMBAIXADA – arquitectura
EMBAIXADA PROJECT TEAM: Albuquerque Goinhas, Augusto Marcelino, Cristina Mendonça, Luis Baptista, Nuno Griff, Pedro Patrício, Sofia Antunes
STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING: P.F.V. ENGENHARIA LDA
Pedro Fragoso Viegas (Civil Engineer)
SEWAGE AND WATER ENGINEERING: CIVITATIS LDA
Rui F. Mendonça (Civil Engineer)
ELECTRICAL AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS ENGINEERING: Augusto Luis Marcelino (Electrical Engineer)
MECHANICAL ENGINEERING: PEN – PROJECTOS DE ENGENHARIA LDA
Luís Andrade (Mechanical Engineer)
HEATING AND ACOUSTICAL STUDY Nuno F. Oliveira, Miguel P. Freire (Civil Engineers)
FIRE ENGINEERING: Ana Salomé (Civil Engineer)
GENERAL CONTRACTOR: Alpeso- Construções, SA

PHOTOGRAPHS: Daniel Malhão (DMF), Mercês Gomes (MG), EMBAIXADA (EMB)

Casa Dos Cubos images / information from e m b a i x a d a

EMBAIXADA

Location: Tomar, Portugal