ÉVORA, PORTUGAL 2007-2012 (with Inês Lobo Arquitectos)
An abandoned factory was acquired by the local university to install the courses of Arts and Architecture. An immense complex of more than 20.000 sqm. attached to the Unesco City Center of Évora.
The proposed occupation of this huge space with a school program oversees, in itself, a radical transformation of values.
Machines are dismantled. People are introduced. The operating system that led to a vertical factory now obliges one to think in a school organized vertically.
Return to the existing structure, subtracting partition walls and ornaments added over the course of time. Retaking its original simplicity as intrinsic value of the structure.
Subtraction as design process, as construction of space. Industrial logic of the former factory defines the strategies for the new constructions of the school.
After less than 3 years classes start at the place. More than 10.000 sqm were remodelling, strictly complying with the highly restrictive budget planned.
The project received the National Rehabilitation Prize IHRU 2013, whose jury was led by Eduardo Souto de Moura.
Despite the low budget and short time constraints, the building was classified with the maximum energy efficiency rate ever attributed in Portugal to a university school building.