Ferreira Construções Headquarters

Ferreira Construções Headquarters
Porto, PT . 2006-2009

Ferreira Construções is a construction and real estate firm and its headquarters, located in one of the main avenues of Oporto, are understandably seen as showcase of the firm and its projects.

The project consisted on the rehabilitation of the existing building and a new pavilion, to be built within the garden, regarding the creation of new working spaces and showrooms.

The original house and gardens, from the 1920’s, were profoundly altered in 1945-6. The project aimed to recover the clarity of the design of existing buildings and find a volumetric balance between them and the garden.

house
The analysis of the existing house and its various phases of construction revealed its dissonant elements as becoming from the 1940´s intervention. The project tried, as much as possible, to recover the original design of the building, removing the superimposed elements or finding a clear design when ever the present house or programme went beyond its original image.
In contrast with the global quietness of interventions on the house, the eastern facade was opened to the garden using glass, in which stands out the showroom in the ground floor.
In the interiors, the main spaces of the composition were redesigned, like the main stairs. The constructive solutions and materials were used as a bridge between the original construction and the new one.

annex and garden
The search of balance between the void and filled spaces, recovering outdoor spaces and giving them clarity guided the project.

The demolition of adored constructions and annexes inside the plot allowed the creation a central void that determined the position of the new building alongside the south limit wall. Drawn as a garden pavilion, the two storey building opens up to the garden thru its glazed facade and its following plan of sunshade screens.


João Luís Carrilho da Graça and Inês Lobo with Pedro Oliveira, Júlia Varela, João Rosário, Gilberto Reis, João Vaz, Rafael Marques
Structures ADF Engenheiros Consultores; Pedro Morujão
Hydraulic Installations: BETAR Engenheiros Consultores; Marta Azevedo
Electrical Installations,Telecommunication and Security: GPIC Projectos Consultoria e Instalações; Fernando Aires.
Heating, Ventilation, Building Physics, Thermic and Acoustics: NaturalWorks; Guilherme Carrilho da Graça
Landscape Architecture: Global Arquitectura Paisagista Lda, João Gomes da Silva

Photographer: Leonardo Finotti