Projects

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Largo da Princesa 26, 3º esq/dto

1400-303, Lisbon, Portugal

geral@miguelarruda.com +351 213 021 858 +351 213 021 863
Pavilhão Arade
  • WAF- World Architecture Festival
  • Year

    2007

  • Location

    Parchal, Algarve – Portugal

  • Photography

    Luis Pavão and Nuno Campos

Intro

The Arade pavilion, with some metrical differences, sought to retain the memory of the previous building (Marques Neves canning factory), as well as the old brick chimney stack which constitutes its unique local icon. We also kept the couple of storks which temporarily abandoned the site during the initial construction phase, only to return shortly afterwards to rebuild their nest.

The complexity and contradiction prefaced by Robert Venturi surrounding the solid, liquid and gaseous elements were the origins of the entire conceptual process.
The dichotomy between the opaque and the non-opaque, assuming three categories: transparency, translucence and evanescence, duly instrumentalised by either natural or artificial light, constituted the fundamental instruments for this concept’s conception.

Hence, the transparency theory that internally and externally exists during the day, this building seeks to pay tribute to the light of the Algarve. At night the building transforms itself, assuming a new formal and pictorial reality, imposing itself chromatically to the nearby and distant urban surroundings, exploring the dichotomous relationship between day and night in that which it can intentionally mean for the life of buildings).

The Arade River, a structurally desirable element of the cultural and economic politics of this region, had to be duly contemplated in this building’s surroundings. Thus, an altimetric effort was made so that it could be seen from some of its floors and the presence of water, the liquid element which surrounds it, constitutes also the evocation of the river.

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