ARQUIPÉLAGO – CONTEMPORARY ARTS CENTRE
Project co-authored by Francisco Vieira de Campos, Cristina Guedes + João Mendes Ribeiro
2007-2014

The design of the Arquipélago – Contemporary Art Center preserves the industrial character of the facility and thematizes the dialogue between an existing building (former alcohol | tobacco factory) and new spaces (culture factory | art production, reserves, multipurpose room | performing arts, workshops, laboratories, artist workshops).

The project does not exaggerate the difference between the old and new buildings. It rather seeks to unite the different scale and age of its parts through a pictorial manipulation of the form and materiality of buildings – the existing ones marked by visible masonry made of volcanic stone, and the new ones marked by an abstract shape without any reference or suggestion of a language and built in exposed concrete with local basalt aggregates, featuring surfaces with an altimeter and textural finish that complement the full/empty relation of the building mass with the empty courtyards.

The Arquipélago takes its identity from the quiet variation between the existing buildings – containment and minimal action in the strategic deployment of infrastructure channels, maximum efficiency in the spatial and functional hierarchy of the different spaces of the factory complex – and the two new buildings that, by demanding special conditions incompatible with pre-existing structures, solve the problem of required features.

The project is committed to the quality of what pre-existed, bringing into light the typological variations – new buildings are placed alongside existing ones in a ‘serene’ way, clarifying what existed in a given period and what was added to it without harming or misrepresenting the spatial and constructive structures of the complex. Context and proximity contribute to the autonomy of the object.