PHYD Arquitectura's new Renova Store and Theatre in Portugal plays with light, form and industrial spirit of the site, which is naturally transformed to building's formal entities. 

PHYD Arquitectura defined the building as Time Capturing Machine, the architects created a decision demanding a specific approach methodology for all of the project’s implementations. It constituted itself by this fundamental fact which divided the issue into two main areas of activity, surface and perforation. 

''Its will originated from two different questions. How is it possible for matter with such low density matter, like air and light, to capture time within a space? Can space be captured through Architecture?'', said PHYD Arquitectura.

''Or are these abusive reflections, which unduly take over elements that cannot relate between them? How is it possible, through Architecture, to articulate these different concepts? Space, Time and Architecture,'' the studio added.

Thinking the project through surface, endowing it with continuity and antagonising expression, which accurately demarcate the boundaries between two of the project’s fundamental surfaces, interior and exterior. 

The demarcation was done not only through matter and its own expression but also through drawing and assessing the point of transition between the two surfaces. 

The architects decided that the exterior surface would be built and characterized by the steel’s own expression. As opposed to that, the interior surface would be characterized by colour and its expression. 

The continuous use of a single colour or of a single matter endows the project with a high level of abstraction. It qualifies it through two surfaces, of antagonising character, which give contrast and simultaneously emphasize another fundamental premise, perforation.

Perforation over the surface, which is obtained from two different mechanisms, the cut and perforation itself. The cut can be seen in the sectioning we did in the pre-existing industrial building, which resulted in the space’s transparent extremities. 

The perforation mechanism can be seen in the remaining operations, shifting only in its scale and dimension, according to the qualification intended of each of the spaces.

''We tried, through architecture and this time machine, to build spaces where people could experience the lightness and density of time and its different temporalities.''

All images © Fernando Guerra / FG+SG

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