PUBLIC BUILDINGS

CULTURAL CENTRE IN GAEIRAS

Gaeiras . 2014

Design year
2014 - 2016
Construction year
2019 - 2021
Location
Gaeiras, Óbidos, Portugal
Team
Jorge Sousa Santos, Vyernu Patel, João Filipe, Rafael Lopes
Client
Câmara Municipal de Óbidos

Gallery

About the project

An urban regeneration project developed through the construction of a single building intended to accommodate learning spaces and co-work, meeting rooms, administrative support offices and a restaurant. The intervention forms part of a set of three operations promoted by the Municipality of Óbidos aimed at territorial requalification through anchor buildings and new programmes of collective use: the co-work and cultural centre in Gaeiras; the Praça da Criatividade, in the Arrifes area adjoining the walls of Óbidos; and the community centre and auditorium in A-da-Gorda.

The geometry of the intervention is defined with the objective of transforming the former Largo de São Marcos — a residual urban space surrounded by an amorphous fabric of small, low- quality buildings — into a legible public square: Praça de São Marcos.

The building is configured as a hybrid between a retaining wall with a carefully controlled texture, constructed from precast concrete elements, a partially buried structure, and a triangular volume clad in a semi-transparent skin of white klinker brick.

This triangular volume, which accommodates the restaurant programme, is the element that formally defines the new square, establishing it as a new point of centrality within the settlement.