vila flor cultural center
publications, guimarães, portugal, rehabilitation, public space, culture
Integrates the Vila Flor Palace and gardens physically and functionally into the urban network, preserving its dimensions but also lowering the impact from the construction of the new building, which resulted in the development of the proposed programme – large auditorium with 800 seats, small auditorium with 200 seats, concert café, restaurant, exhibition room 1000m2 in size, meeting rooms, administration area…
It came about from the need to create a new open building – or new buildings, that similarly with the Vila Flor Palace favour the relationship with the Garden and the city, deriving from the need to separate the volumes and constructions, and also establishing an organisational pattern where the “theatre” was a place of transit and permanence. The “theatre” would have to contain the creation of a public urban space linked with the surrounding urban network, a living and leisure space where the garden and exterior spaces occupy a dominating role.
In the programme´s interpretation the completion of the operating possibility of each one of its components was aimed for independently and simultaneously, and it was understood that the building(s) should expressively convey this project choice in a volumetric way, that is, each principal programmatic component should correspond with a unit with its own characteristics and which is easily identifiable by the covering materials.
