The Research an Design Center building is big because the brief was big.

Parking in the basement. Social and technical areas in the semi-basement. Research and work areas in two floors that are raised above the ground in order to maintain the relationship of spaces and views.

The social areas are made up of exhibition areas for the company’s art collection, meeting rooms, a restaurant and two conference rooms, one of which is in the form of an amphitheatre. And the Health Club.

The research floors are as open as possible, in accordance with the express wishes of the client, who was clearly impressed by the relationship between spaces in the Library of Aveiro University, and in accordance with the need to ventilate and dissipate smells and fumes and to guarantee safety and for the other technical conditions typical of a laboratory.

The base; the building which forms the base is clad with slabs of slightly rough black granite.

Over this building there is a partially landscaped terrace where the confluence of pathways and the separation of that which is on the ground and that which is suspended in cantilevers occurs.

The volume of the laboratories is almost entirely clad in a double skin glazed screen on a metal structure.

The faces and details vary between zinc and white marble, differentiating between spaces and also between functions.

Despite being a box or a container for functions, the richness in the simple use of materials transforms it into a kind of Pandora’s Box in reverse, out of which come the most beautiful things that transform the least beautiful women in the kingdom of Korea.

Carlos Castanheira