Habitar Portugal 12-14HP 12-14

The new programme called for the conversion of the existing facility into a new school centre with 12 classrooms, a gym with changing rooms, a library, a canteen and all the complementary facilities. The exterior spaces were also to be redesigned and a sheltered playground created.
The aim of the design was to establish a dialogue between the existing buildings and the new body, creating recognisable bonds based on the design vocabulary and functional distribution.
The common language was to result from both the appropriation by the new structure of techniques and materials used in the existing buildings and from a formal purification of that idiom.
Accordingly, in the existing buildings the number of di erent window types was reduced, doors and steps were eliminated, the asbestos cement roofing was replaced by inverted at roofs and a new base in white brick was added.
In the new structure, the concrete slab floors in between the vertical brick walls are exposed. It also uses inverted roof solutions identical to those applied in the remodelled buildings and reproduces the interior classroom distribution. The forms of natural lighting in the spaces were increased and their relationship with the exterior improved – either by introducing larger windows or by using various bricklaying methods to produce opaque and translucent surfaces.