Cascais, Portugal
Tiago Rebelo de Andrade, founder of Subvert Studio architects, has transformed an existing hotel for INOVAR in the small Portuguese village of Cascais into a new public space and contemporary housing center.
Located in Cascais, the new residerntial and commericial building is known as “Edifício Náutico.”
Architect Rebelo de Andrade was was born and raised in Cascais, and his new design inspired by sailing culture and the ocean.
Creating a new identity of the area, the project was short-listed for a 2021 International Architecture Award from The Chicago Athenaeum and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.
Edificio Nautico holds a dominating position in the block, drawing a square that improves mobility. The building floats above the arcade, like a ship with two prows.
The skin of the Nautico Building is a reinterpretation of another important part of Portuguese cultural heritage, drawing ceramic blinds that define privacy and provide light/heat protection. The whole skin has 29104 ceramic pieces, distributed in 856 blind panels (fixed and pivot) with 4 meters high each. The blue color is a gentle reminder of the ocean that surrounds us, broadly exposed to the sun to create diverse light stains throughout the day.
The Building has a ground floor interior patio between the two towers that creates access to the 28 apartments. This patio designs an introspective ambiance, to create a more intimate approach to the private scale.
The 28 apartments are equally distributed in two towers, each presenting three stories above the ground floor.
The distribution of apartments was made through a modular exercise that sought to solve the housing program and construction area limitations; the strategy comprised a central core within each tower containing all vertical accesses, thus diminishing areas lost to corridors.
Surrounding the cores, an infra-structure ring was designed to accommodate kitchens and bathrooms. The overall design allowed the periphery and corners of each tower to be developed as noble spaces, with living rooms and bedrooms next to the facade.
On the third floor, the higher floor of the building, four apartments take place, two within each tower. Although different and bigger, these apartments followed the same design principles as those considered in the other apartments, substantiated with the ideal of perimetrical balconies to create new views.
Each of these four apartments also has exclusive access to a dedicated private terrace that immediately transports again to the nautical theme; a wooden deck floor and railings resembling those of a yacht’s prow.
Project: Edificio Nautico
Architects: Subvert Studio
Client:INOVAR Cascais
Contractor: Alves Ribeiro, S.A.
Photographers: FG + SG fotografia de arquitectura
