Porto Office Park

Porto Office Park is a new landmark development creating an exciting workplace benchmark for the city of Porto. The architecturally bold development provides a pioneering and unique office experience with the creation of two landmark office buildings and a sculptural amenity building, enveloped by a new urban park. The symbiosis between technology, design and nature mean that Porto Office Park is much more than a standard modern office development with the new BREEAM ‘Excellent’ office park designed with flexibility and user wellbeing at its heart. The two symmetrical office buildings are each nine storeys with each floorplate set up on a 1.5m grid, allowing occupiers to completely tailor the space to their needs. The buildings are clad with a prefabricated glass and aluminium façade, constructed in modules of 8.4m lengths across two floors creating a rhythmical vertical pattern of dark textured fins that reflect the granite used to construct many of Porto’s early buildings. At night this verticality is further emphasized by the use of random lines of light that ‘pop out’ from the fin’s edges. The iconic design of the façade also provides an important shading function and changes character, appearance and even colour at different times of the day and when viewed from different angles. The integration of inside and out and creating a strong sense of place was also at the forefront of the design intent with the office buildings designed to integrate with the 15,000sqm new urban park, with green walls in the lobby areas and stone and wood finishes reinforcing the natural aspects of the project and enhancing the overall feeling of wellbeing within the buildings. The two-storey leisure building, which includes two restaurants, retail space, a gym and changing rooms for the three new paddle ball courts, responds to the design of the two main office buildings with a contemporary language that constitutes a series of dynamic metal 1.5m-spaced metal framed porticos. These also serve as support elements for the growth of vines, integrating the building into the surrounding landscape.