Energia de Portugal Headquarters / ELEMENTAL

This project had to solve a kind of paradox, two forces pulling in opposite directions: on the one hand, it had to comply with a Masterplan that required continuity of the public space from the hills to the river (north-south direction) resulting in a splitting of the building's mass into two linear volumes. On the other hand, the building had to function as one single entity; so the 2 linear volumes had to be connected in the east-west direction threatening the north-south continuity of the public space. So, to respond to both forces simultaneously, we folded the ground of the public space with a slight slope that complied with the hill-river continuity and then connected the two linear volumes under the highest point of the folded ground.