Experimental

Our first impulse was clear, almost intuitive: lifting the building off the ground.
Instead of creating a monolithic barrier, the structure fractured into two parts, elevated to let the green space slip through, expanding the visual continuity of nature. Gardens could now transition seamlessly from the front to the so-called back of the building. It was an extension of the landscape only interrupted by the occasional connecting boxes, which acted as links between the public domain and the living units.

The first outcome of this action is that the project is now composed of two bodies facing a green landscape, and no backside. A long, unbroken bar with two equal fronts, and a short panoramic tower—an unexpected composition compared to the typical, oppressive L-shaped block.

If nature was a driving force behind the building ethos, so too was the industrial machine, the pre-fabricated, the mass-produced and the ready-made. The building was designed to use as few site-specific elements as possible. The façade - a uniform curtain of windows, held up by metal frames and its balconies clad with prefabricated panels - is an exercise in standardization and affordability. It is conceived with the precision of an assembly line.

Inside we find the biggest and most daring shift. The typical segregation of front and back that has defined housing in Portugal since the revolution is erased, scattered and rendered irrelevant. What was once a clear delineation between public and private, a very strict architectural legacy of the past, is now replaced by something more fluid, more open. There is no longer a “front” or a “back.” The interior of the building is no longer compartmentalized, but reimagined as a vast, flexible space. The light, the air, the possibility of life can now move freely, without constraints.

In fifty years, a lot has changed. The way we live, too. This design is meant to show that. A life less bound by hierarchy, less dominated by walls.