Portugal-based architecture firm Nelson Resende Arquitecto has combined three different volumes to design an office building, merged and rotated in different directions to adapt the climatic conditions of the city.

The 120-square-metre office building is located in an agricultural land of Arada, Ovar - north of Portugal, acting as a contemporary and tiny art piece within the site. 

Situated at 1.00 m above from the street level, and is located in an environment of dispersed buildings with a strong presence of agricultural activity. "The choice of site is therefore not thoughtless," said the architects.

The client came with a need to create two offices, with possible autonomous use, but it would allow an internal connection, considering the possible merging of the two spaces.

"Although the program is of a commercial nature, the need for decontamination, back to the essence, a kind of purity that allows, without initial affections, to think, conceive and produce new spaces, conditioned this choice that, unlike most service spaces, is not located in a more urbanized center," said the studio.

"There is, therefore, a conscious detachment that compensates for the increasingly frenetic pace at which things have to be thought and produced."

The building is comprised of a juxtaposition of a series of pure, little-tamed volumes, linked by necessity, but assuming its own identity.

The result seeks, however, to be more than a sum, an idea of formulation that exposes without fear the crudeness of the essence as a possible way, the honesty of the simple forms, exposed without filters, in a game that emphasizes the dynamism, by the different rotation of the volumes.

Its different altimetry and solar exposition allow the creation of an object of easy apprehension and simultaneously of insinuated complexity, by the games of light/shadow. 

And that causes, by the apparent ambiguity of how it is shown, the emergence of different volumetric formulation but reserved in the functional connection that establishes, filtered, with the surroundings.

"The natural surroundings are a permanent mutation scenario, resulting from the agricultural cycles, the seasons, the climatic conditions of each season and the success of the tilth that proliferate," added the architects. 

"The building, which is immutable, is shaping much more slowly and, at the most, it can accuse the skates themselves of it own exposure to the weather conditions that, along with the longevity it as, influence its appearance."

"Moreover, this almost immutability of the building before an environment at least cyclically changeable exposes the building in ways that are not controlled - the forms gain an apparent importance before a nature that is transfigured when, year after year, they appear with this constancy," explained the architects. 

The apparent lightness of the gesture is contrary to the resistance of the work in time, which in itself also shows a certain tension - the work nevertheless seems to have resulted from a sudden act, little reflected, when in fact, this simplicity results from a successive detachment of artifacts used more commonly in other circumstances, and is therefore the result of a long process of maturation and reflection.

Ground floor plan

Roof plan

East facade

West facade

South facade

North facade

Section-1

Section-2

Section-3

Section-4

Project facts

Project name: Office Building 

Location: Rua da Nogueira, Arada, Ovar

Project date: 2016

Client: Private

Architecture: Nelson Resende Arquitecto/Nelson Resende, Architect

Exterior design: Nelson Resende, Architect

Structures: Sandra Leite, Engenheira Civil

Construction area: 120.00 m2

All images © Joao Morgado

> via Nelson Resende Arquitecto