12-14,
Viriato II Building
For the Viriato i building, with a view to reinvigorating the site, I avoided an industrial idiom and produced a Mannerist building (a façade with considerable thickness) in a design full of composition, false symmetries and hierarchised window spans.
For this addition I focused on expressing what it represents and contains – an assembly line that extends the original factory. The new Viriato building is colder in expression but no less plastic in its modulation. It complements the opaque Viriato I with the transparency of its glass surfaces and the vibration of the metal sheeting that re ects and reveals the systems that order its daily routine: the factory, the store, the canteen, the design studios, the showroom and the meeting hall.
The linearity of its geometry has made it a building one can see from afar, when one drives past on the motorway. As one approaches, the glass surfaces reveal its functional dynamic.
