Collective Housing in Vereda Quinta da Cruz - Maia

Vereda Quinta da Cruz, Águas Santas, Portugal

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Collective Housing in Vereda Quinta da Cruz - Maia

Vereda Quinta da Cruz, Águas Santas, Portugal

Firm

PARADOXO Arquitectura

Type

Residential › Multi Unit Housing

STATUS

Built

YEAR

2023

SIZE

25,000 sqft - 100,000 sqft

BUDGET

$5M - 10M

The site is located on the outskirts of the city of Porto, within a residential subdivision, flanked to the north and south by collective housing buildings and to the west by single-family homes.
The developer intended to construct a building suitable for families, without reducing either the areas or the typologies. Therefore, the objective was to create twenty-five 2-bedroom and 3-bedroom apartments. In this sense, and together with the conditions of the subdivision – five floors above ground, one floor below ground, and urbanisation works to be completed, the premises for the project to be undertaken have been met.
The concept of the intervention emerges from a sculptural essay on a white parallelepiped block. The volumetric expression results from the subtraction of matter ordered in three depths defined by the tops of the slabs, by the masses and by the gaps that create a play of light and shadow. It is this expression that creates the ornament of the excavated block. On this order of depths, two standard floors are implemented that vary from each other only in the arrangement of the exterior openings and their balconies. This variation ensures the necessary diversity of the façades and provides different ways of living on the same interior layout of the apartments.
The anthracite grey block distinguishes itself by its size and sobriety, creating the extension of the garage floor and terraces on its roof.
The building combines this white excavated block with another regular anthracite grey block, both resting on a concrete base.
The main entrance is positioned halfway between the garage and the dwelling. This option made it possible to resolve the connection of the pedestrian and automobile access to the public domain, the natural ventilation of the garage floor, and the privacy of the first floor of the dwellings.
In this sequence, the six-storey building is organised at the basement level with the garage, individual storage areas, condominium room with bathroom and technical area with the water tank, the entrance and the waste enclosure are located on the intermediate floor floor, and the dwellings on floors 1 to 5.
The interior of the building results in the continuity of the exterior white colour that reinforces the original concept of the excavated block. For the circulation routes used to access the dwellings, the entrances are revealed through recessed doors according to the same logic as the façade. The rigidity of these circulation routes is broken up by the dispersed arrangement of the lighting.
In the garage area the concrete base on which the two blocks of the building rest is visible.
At the main entrance, the composition of the building is concentrated – with the white of the excavated block, the anthracite grey of the metal block and the concrete of the base – and this synthesises the entire intervention.
With a view to reducing energy consumption, a strategy of passive solutions was implemented within the building, with emphasis on the natural ventilation of the garage and common circulation spaces, on the shading of openings by recessing the covered balconies, and on the application of solar panels to heat sanitary water.
Despite the complex articulation between form, programme legislation, and infrastructures, the concept was clarified in search of the building’s density. This density expresses the dimension that goes beyond the built work, the dimension of the experience of inhabiting that is the essential matter of architecture.