Gomos System Prefabricated Building Design, Portuguese Architecture, Modular Units Portugal

Modular Building System in Vale de Cambra

Sistema Gomos Modular Units: Portugal Prefabricated Buildings design by SUMMARY studio

22 Jul 2017

SUMMARY unveils its latest project using the Gomos System

or “How to raise a 1000m2 building in a few months”

After the Gomos#1 prototype (video) and the exhibition in La Biennale di Venezia, SUMMARY studio unveils the newest project using their modular building system.

Modular Building System in Vale de Cambra, Portugal

This project was born in order to build housing and multi–services spaces, in a common roadside area in Vale de Cambra, Portugal. The client required that the construction should be fast, cost effective and changeable over time, which prompted the studio to use prefabricated elements and to leave parts of the project undefined.

In Alejandro Aravena’s words, “SUMMARY’s proposed set of prefabricated elements has managed to balance the logics of prefabricated infrastructure and architecture as support”^*. This project configures a practical example of this architectural approach, assuming the immediacy, flexibility and resources optimization as the core themes.

The strategy is clear: a ground floor level for the multi-services program connected with the public space, crowned by the individual habitational units. Due to the differences between the two programs, it was created an independent access for each function, placing them in different levels and taking advantage of the natural ground’s slope.

The ground floor is composed by prefabricated slabs and structural panels in the whole exterior perimeter. Considering the building’s location, in a road-side area where everything changes too fast, the multi-services space is conceived in a very flexible way: the internal compartmentalization is made with removable panels with inner rails for the distribution of water and electricity systems. This enables future adjustments and modifications: it’s possible to add or remove compartments or let the whole level function as an open space. Thus, the users will make their own space, according to the program at hand.

The first floor is all composed of Gomos System units. Considering that the maximum building area permitted by law was quite short, the requested empty space was used to separate the housing units. Concepted and licensed as a collective housing building, with this split this project offers the main advantages of single houses: clearly individualized entrances and a complete acoustic separation between the different units.

The Vale de Cambra project construction just started and it will be finished within the end of 2017.

Sistema Gomos Vale de Cambra, Portugal – Building Information

TECHNICAL DATA:

Architecture:

SUMMARY

Engineering: FTS, Technical Solutions

Prefabrication and Assembly: Farcimar, Soluções em Pré-Fabricados de Betão

Category: Multi-services / Housing

Status: Under construction

Building Year: 2017

Construction Area: 970 m2

Predominant Material: Reinforced concrete

Location: Vale de Cambra, Portugal

Client: Private

^*Curator’s Rationale, about the SUMMARY installation (INFRASTRUCTURE-STRUCTURE-ARCHITECTURE) at La Biennale di Venezia 2016 “Reporting from the Front”.

SUMMARY is a young architectural studio based in the Science and Technology Park of University of Porto, Portugal, founded by Samuel Gonçalves in 2015. Seeking the balance between pragmatism and experimentalism, this practice aims for solutions that could answer a prominent challenge that the contemporary world places to architecture: how to make the construction act an increasingly summary process?

Modular Building System Vale de Cambra Design images / information from SUMMARY studio

Location: Vale de Cambra, Portugal, southwest Europe

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