Experimental

The new building for the NOVA Institute for a Sustainable Future embodies the ideals upheld by NOVA FCT — technical excellence, scientific relevance, and research prestige. These ideals are made literal and tangible through architecture. The building’s volume is clear, its structure modular and rational, and its interior openly expressed on the outside, revealing an organisation in constant motion, composed of laboratories, research facilities, and industry-related spaces.

The architectural proposal is thus guided by progressive and technological models aligned with the institution’s mission, while simultaneously acknowledging the built and natural context of the campus. The project — and its defining components such as façade, structure, colour, scale, form, and materiality — draws from industrial and technological elements and their symbolic charge, representing a new generation of innovation and multidisciplinary research across scientific and economic domains.

The Institute is shaped by a strong implantation geometry, structured in two volumes corresponding to two construction phases. These are interconnected by a central bridge, which mediates between the interior environment and the surrounding campus landscape. On the exterior, the building is characterised by the use of photovoltaic panels on the south-west façades — one of its most defining features. The photovoltaic system is installed in a highly efficient and utilitarian manner, ensuring on-site energy production for self-consumption. This energy infrastructure becomes a core architectural expression: the building as machine — a technological, laboratory-based infrastructure in constant operation.