VN Garden Pavilion, Porto Public Building Images, Northern Portugal Structure, Architecture Photos

VN Garden Pavilion in Porto

Public Building Project in Portugal design by NOARQ Architects

12 Jul 2017

Architect: José Carlos Nunes de Oliveira Arquitecto

Location: Trofa, Porto, northern Portugal

VN Garden Pavilion

Photos by Patrick Monteiro e José Carlos Nunes de Oliveira

VN Garden Pavilion

The architects received an urgent call from a client asking them to transform a modest wooden frame shelter (covered with tile) into a renovated and bigger garden pavilion. It was a basic construction in a eclectic yard landscape serving a luxury villa. The house was surrounded by successive kitsch extensions. The request was to design a garden structure able to host a family wedding four months later.

– The challenge didn’t promise! The object was fragile and too small. In the meantimes the clients bought the attached property and the new project gained a new front – new possibilities!

The neighborhood buildings were (and are) humble and with variety in their forms, colors and facades. In the surrounding landscape emerges an assortment of constructive contamination and land occupation. I remembered that Manuel Graça Dias used to repeat: “The landscape is occupied with houses, many houses and other buildings, inventions that make life possible, that make it more “natural”, no ugly nor beautiful, roads, water ducts, tanks, energy ducts, furnaces, factories, schools, churches (…) symbolic places that are a celebration of the ordinary life and sociability (…)”

I laid aside the things I would like to do and started working. I began a diligent reading of the old Encyclopedia of Civil Construction of F. Pereira da Costa for wooden structures. The idea is to extend the 100 sqm into a new cover and closed space of 270 sqm, making the symmetry of the structure increased to west and getting over 150 sqm.

This symmetrical structure would not be covered; it was only a skeleton on a terrace. In case of a special event, like the wedding, we can disassemble the new glassed windows in front of the terrace and cover the structure with a big textile coating – it makes disappear the afternoon space and became an evening hall – almost 450 sqm covered.

During the work the unthinkable happens in a certain moment: the old structure was removed and remade from the zero. Kitchen, toilets per gender, a sauna complemented by a hydromassage bath are in the marginal and hidden areas of the salon for summer and weekend use. In the attached property recently acquired by the client, were a house and a small factory. The factory was razed and became an open garden and the house was demolished at the first floor level, leaving a ruin stone enclosing a garden.

Used materials: The structure, ceilings and frames are made in wood; Sawed granite in the pavement; brick with plaster in the walls, protected by a Estremoz marble toeboard.

VN Garden Pavilion in Porto – Building Information

Author: José Carlos Nunes de Oliveira, arch.
Collaborators: Diana Fernandes, arch; Joana Pinto, arch.
Localization: Trofa, Oporto, Portugal
Period: 2011

Consultant: Gepec – Afonso Neves., Eng. Civil; Gepec – Eng. Jorge Martins; Gpic – Alexandre Martins; Get – Raul Bessa
Carpentry: Antolisá, João Lima, Electro Marques, Marsousa, Graminho, Giovanni di Pietro Unipessoal, O Bibelot, Sanimaia;
Constructors Irmãos Maia, Carpicunha