Best New Global Design 2009 Barreiro College of Technology in Portugal by ARX Portugal Arquitectos

Posted by martha on February 16, 2010 in Building | 0 Comment

The Technology College of Barreiro has been presented the International Architecture Award for the Best New Global Design 2009 by the Chicago Athenaeum, Architect and Design Museum. It has also been shortlisted for ENOR 2009 and FAD 2009, the answers of which will be declared in the upcoming couple of months. Placed on the outskirts of Lisbon the college was projected by ARX Portugal, the firm head by brothers Nuno and José Mateus.

“The construction site delegated for the School is placed in the outskirts of the city of Barreiro. These are rural districts which were infested by new buildings crossing green-gardens and reed plots. Abode homes are predominant and different uses weren’t forecast for this arena and so this neighbourhood is today just a suburb with small urban life.

“There are many plans that cause a public response even before its creation, and there one may discover a good deal of critical issues to contemplate. This school is such a model. The dwellers of this “neighbourhood” resisted against its creation cause they desired a primary school as an alternative – which was changed elsewhere -, however also cause they frightened the affect a construction of wide proportions would have, both visually and ecologically. Frightening that the trees would be chop down, they calculated and checked Each single one.

We targeted at impressing to the construction a somewhat unclear type. On one hand it “disseminates” and consents the abundance of the natural components, on the other hand it deals with their existence as an synthetic component of abstract origin. This rule is highlighted by the structural options: big coal-grey block that, when divided, exposes a white interior.

The architecture gets more topographical in one of the extremities of the construction, where there’s no way to say where the encircling begins or finishes, and in the different side, with its more present limits, characterized by the alignment of the tops of the other bodies of the construction.”