Custóias Civic Center

The Custóias Civic Centre offers Cultural and Social facilities for the public. With multimedia space in the first floor and a living space in the ground floor, it generates interaction between generations.

The Project went after formal abstraction. It tried to insert in the chaotic city mesh an exception, one that could, through it’s plasticity, produce a big contrast with the surroundings.

The compact volume, almost a perfect cube, allows articulation between elements that define the building facade composition without making it loose it’s unicity. We used chromatic gradations in grey scale on the outside and colour gradations on the inside.

It appears to be a 4 storey building and in fact it only has two storeys with double height. It was designed like this to control proportion and scale in the facade.

A third chromatic element was used in the interior metal stairs to create contrast with the walls. Colour had the capacity of introducing different environments. Gradation, as a cinematic colour composition, create movement and dynamic effects to the building and its spaces.

PromoterMatosinhos City HallYear2006Linkwww.archdaily.comPhotographsLeonardo Finotti