Buganvílias
BUGANVÍLIAS Porto, Portugal Buganvílias Houses is a row housing project consisting of five houses, integrated into a lot designed by the office more than a decade ago. This lot included, in the first instance, “Japoneiras” and “Sobreiros” Houses and is now completed with the construction of the “Oliveiras” and “Buganvílias” Houses. It is not possible to explain the Buganvílias Houses without mentioning the Japoneiras project, designed about 10 years before for the same client, exactly with the same program. Now, a decade after Japoneiras Houses’ commercial success, the client asks for a new block of houses, to be constructed beside the existing one. The challenge was to – in a module with exactly the same width and implantation area – answer the same brief from the same client, making the same program, in the same place, with the same price and destined to the same end customer, only 10 years later. Technology and constructive systems had evolved, regulations and laws had changed, and the way of dwelling had transformed itself. Facing new challenges, revisiting the houses for the second time around was necessarily different. Subtle changes have been implemented that completely transformed the houses. A direct link was created between the kitchen and the living room – without having to walk down the hall – supported by a scullery. Following the new housing trends, the kitchen is not just a “food laboratory” but also a socializing space, through the introduction of a central island. This was made possible by a new stairwell arrangement, which also allowed to resolve more effectively the elevator implementation. The exteriors were also reinvented and now assume a fundamental role in the project, being not only spaces of use but also visual dampers. The shared access path is now richer and more private. The walls and blades grow in relation to the Japoneiras Houses and become screens that form patios in front of the houses. On the other hand, the vegetation to be implemented is simultaneously a synonym of beauty and intimacy, covering the large glass door at the entrance of the house. Pivoting, the door acts as a frame of nature, when closed, and fully opens to allow a symbiosis between the kitchen and the garden. The facade becomes more profuse than in the previous model: balconies, cantilevered and recessed bodies provide the houses with three-dimensionality and rhythm. The various plans and perspectives lend a great plastic richness and complex spatial characteristics to the building. There is no perfect definition of the boundary between interior and exterior: the houses are enlarged and visually extended to the next block. As so, Buganvílias display a set of characteristics that make them truly exquisite. First of all, the functionality factor, which is the basis of the whole block. A house is meant to be lived in and, as we see it, in residential architecture, functional issues cannot be overlooked in the pursuit of aesthetic ideals. The introduction of new elements and materials in relation to the previous model always had to do with the improvement of a certain solution, the central concern being to offer the client five comfortable and robust houses, whose beauty stands the test of time. Simultaneously, the project represents a subtle homage to the architecture of the city where it is located: Porto. Buganvílias Houses use the modularity concept of the unmistakable typical houses of downtown Porto – in which all the modules have the same width – taking it further: the flat, cut facades cease to be thin skins and become profound three-dimensional volumes embedding rhythm and personality into the houses. The beauty of this project reaches its peak in the conceptualization of a daily life phenomenon that happens all over the world: the appropriation of a building by its residents. By transforming into an intellectual object the way in which, in a building, each household adapts its exterior areas to its own personality, the appropriation is not only allowed but incentivized. This was made possible by the introduction of copper plated planters that encourage the residents to personalize their space in each floor through vegetation, without, however, creating disharmony with the rest of the houses. In addition to allowing, in a planned and controlled way, that the residents put their personality into the house’s facade, the vegetation sweetens their relation with architecture, softening the impact of the artificial object. Used as form of expression – a living material – green assumes a variety of functions and is closely linked to the notions of sustainable architecture that were at the heart of the project. Through technology – which includes home automation and solar panels – and the encouragement of the creation and maintenance of green areas and the preservation of nature, sustainability is one of the pivotal characteristics of Buganvílias Houses. Finally, representing an improved model of the Japoneiras Houses, exactly for the same client and in the same place, 10 years later, Buganvílias Houses symbolize the reinvention of an architect in the same program. Side by side with Japoneiras, past and future, Buganvílias prove that architecture is a dynamic art and science that lives to and based on the world around it and that, for the same brief, it is possible to reinvent and perfect ourselves infinite times.
University of Porto
Public research university in Porto, Portugal.
Riverside Condominium
MJARC Arquitetos was invited to rehabilitate a building that has punctuated the landscape of Santa Comba Dão for more than 20 years. The design team and developers decided to achieve an ambitious goal: to reuse the existing building as much as possible and establish a new, high quality standard in the adaptive reuse of the building. The objective to be achieved is to maintain more than 90% of the original structure (beams, columns and slabs) and 75% of the original core, resulting in embodied carbon savings. This residential building will have 4 floors above ground and will consist of 28 apartments with types ranging from T2 to T3. Located on the slope of the Dão River, it will offer a panoramic view of the surrounding area. The facade of the building is made of Bamboo wood provided from responsible forests with international certificacion LEED, BREEAM and FSC The building's zinc roof allows the creation of shading areas in the terrace areas, reinforcing the horizontality of the building.
Flores House
The romantic idea of conceiving a home where the family can share a common place and adapts to all stages of life was the starting point. From this vision, which reflects all the premises of a comfortable and functional home, framed in an almost bucolic context of the typical suburbs of the northern cities of Portugal. Although very close to the center of the cities of Espinho, Vila Nova de Gaia and Porto, this house, located in the village of São Félix da Marinha, takes advantage of the tranquility of a location that, although served by easy access to urban proximity, also benefits from the peaceful environment of neighboring crops and the coastal line punctuated by popular beaches. The starting volume is deconstructed and adapted to the pre-existing cork oaks, creating physical and visual dynamics that enrich the experience of the spaces. Keeping the trees was mandatory and the volume adapted to them as well as to the shape of the plot and the program. The more linear side of the volume contains the rooms whose identical size allows for a modular metric, on which the rest of the program is based. Spaces with a utility character such as the garage, laundry room and kitchen are associated with the car and the pedestrian access. The remaining program focuses on the central, innermost area where the pool is located. With only one level, all rooms benefit from natural light, through generous openings, a patio or even skylights. From the deconstruction of the volume, a common element stands out - the roof pane. With angular contours, it unifies the spaces and brings together alignments, intersections and directions, encompassing the main areas around the patio. A volume external to this main composition appears on the western part and houses a regional kitchen and a dining area with barbecue that is intended to be covered by a vine, giving shade and freshness to the space. This volume encloses the central space of the pool, visually and physically protecting it. The lawn that surrounds the house distributes small recreational areas and unifies the garden, offering a continuity of vegetation with the neighboring forest. The color white is dominant. The sobriety of the materials reflects the simplicity of the project. The granite slab that defines the paths and covers the outdoor living areas refers to a typical material from the region, often used in rural accommodation, not only because of its local availability but also because of its durability and easy maintenance. The stereotomy is conventional and the application of the material is stripped of elaborate details, following the sober language of the project. In the interior, the options jump between white and wood, resulting in sober and bright environments. The glazed facades allow a lighter reading of the block, associating the pool, socializing and resting areas in an inherent connection between interior and exterior, facilitated by the transparent materiality of the element that organizes them and by the water of the pool itself.
DOP Restaurant & Bar
1. Nestled within the Palácio das Artes, the historic headquarters of the Bank of Portugal, DOP restaurant anchors one of the corners facing the iconic S. Domingos square in Porto's Centro Histórico, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. DOP’s presence and identity are established on the building's corner façade, with a its custom red neon logo. Every detail that follows is bespoke, customized for the restaurant: lighting, furniture, fixtures, millwork, and stone. Following extensive renovations, the main façade now holds four double-height windows, warmly illuminated by elegant vertical lamps that draw the eye of passers-by into the restaurant. 2. Entering through tall glass paned double doors, a sense of the theatrical unfolds, with soaring ceilings, generous windows, warm wood and stone details. Flooded with natural light during the day, the mood turns decidedly warm and refined in the evening, bathed in light and shadow. Commissioned artworks complement the sleek lines of the custom furnishings, and the sinuous curves of the arched windows echoed in various elements throughout the space. The comfortable lounge seating and tables are scattered throughout, framed on either side by built-in window seats and bar stools in red leather. Curated music enhance DOP's concept of relaxed modern opulence. 3. Off the bar, a warm wood passage opens onto the dining room, its amber light and monochrome palette reflected across mirrored upper walls that frame clubby leather banquette. Seemingly a nod to the universal desire to see and be seen, the reflective surfaces and room layout strategically reinforce visual connections while playing with our spacial perception, but most importantly allow staff to monitor the room from any angle and respond as if anticipating the diner’s need before uttering a word. Spread over two floors, the room is connected vertically along the restaurant’s facade, the floor pulling away to create a curved balcony, the linear light fixtures illuminating round banquettes below. 4. The kitchen is carefully designed for workflow optimization, avoiding crossed circulation of the extensive team that works within a space constrained by equipment and choreography. This kitchen is lit as if a theater stage, with glass doors providing views of Michelin-starred creativity and craft. A hidden wine cellar caters to the true connoisseur, with an elegant backlit and climate-controlled space. 5. The bathroom was designed to surprise and delight guests, playing with concepts of compression, the three-dimensional, and kinetic perception to become highly instantly popular and recognizable on social media platforms. Its entrance features a dazzle camouflage visual technique with black and white stripes, framed in a red transition area that leads to the upper level through a custom engineered-marble staircase with mirrors at different angles, generating a playful kaleidoscopic environment. 6. Upstairs, a curved balcony floats over the bar, alluding at once to the pulpits where verse was read to the faithful, paying homage to the convent that existed here for almost 600 years. This veranda offers views of the bar, ties the restaurant's fruition together, and provides a coherent narrative to being out on the town.
Hotel Vinyard
Vineyard Hotel at Douro Valley in Portugal. The project intends to capture the essence of a place that aims to create an atmosphere of harmony between nature and people. All rooms have a clear view of the vineyard and Douro Valley. The sitting room and dinning room offers not only beautiful views, but also an unobstructed exit into the natural space. The programme includes reception,restaurant, spa with outdoor pool. In addition, the building functions as a winery, where guests experience the whole winemaking process, from grapes selection, crushing, fermentation and pressing, to barrel aging, blending, filtering and bottling. Due to its innovative energy technology renewable sources—geothermal boreholes, solar photovoltaics, solar hot water tubes to target net-zero energy on an annual basis. Rainwater is filtered and used for the building’s greywater requirements; 100% of blackwater is treated by an on-site bioreactor and released into a new feature percolation field and garden. The future hotel aims to provide a full experience, an architecture that merges with the surroundings. Stimulate and promote being with people visiting the area and understanding the culture, provoking thought. This project embraces this initiative so that together we can build a future that is not only sustainable and inclusive, but also truly beautiful, both for our eyes and for our mind and soul.
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.
Essenza
Essenza is a luxury multifamily residential building located at the doorstep of Porto's City Park, in Portugal. Following all the guidelines and metrics defined by the Park's Urbanization Plan for the nascent urban front, the volume lives in total coherence with the surroundings, while standing out for its unusual properties. The building's most striking feature is the facade's three-dimensionality, created through geometric rips that cut the concrete, like if there is a body's reaction in each tear – a kind of blister. This geometric effect creates the illusion of undulation and movement and is adapted to the facade facing the park, where the openings are much larger, and the protrusion effect is smaller. This design makes better use of the park's views while maintaining the building's conceptual consistency. The openings' geometry is enriched by the shine of the golden aluminum of the minimalist frames. Likewise, the planters' vegetation and colors jazz up the white-toned dry facade. The gated community has a reception, which provides security to its residents and contributes to the building's unitary image. The facade's skin effect extends to the base of the volume, covered from one end to the other by a golden grid with a design inspired by the tapered geometry oculi. This solution allows solving the proximity to the street, integrating housing programs, a lobby, and garages entrances on a sole basis, without interfering with the object's reading. Semi-translucent and delicate, this surface acts as a membrane that prevents the passage but allows light to enter. Essenza was designed to be experienced, combining technology with a selection of luxury finishes to provide maximum comfort and functionality to its residents. In this context, we highlight the home automation system, the radiant floor heating used in the circulation spaces, bedrooms, living rooms, and the Carrara marble used throughout the bathrooms. The marble blocks were selected directly in Carrara, brought from Italy, and cut, treated, and fully prepared in Portugal. Sustainability and energy efficiency are two core characteristics of Essenza. The water is heated using solar panels for centralized accumulation, which is then distributed for individual use by each dwelling, being a more efficient system than the instant production one. Unused energy is not wasted and heats the fifth-floor pools. It's also worth mentioning the ventilation systems – that lead to a two-third reduction in energy consumption – and the installation of condensing boilers, which allow energy savings and reduction in CO2 emissions to the atmosphere. In permanent dialogue with the Park, Essenza promotes the extension of its physical spaces, in a symbiosis between interior and exterior, as if it were a marriage between architecture and nature.
Get optimized routing, transit times, and turn-by-turn directions.
Open in Atlas MapFrequently Asked Questions
How long does the Porto architecture walking tour take?+
The self-guided walking tour covers approximately 44.3 km with 4 stops. Allow approximately 11 hours including 20 minutes of viewing time per building.
Is the Porto architecture tour free?+
Yes, this is a completely free self-guided walking tour. You can view the route on the interactive map, export it to Google Maps for navigation, and explore at your own pace.
Do I need to book the Porto architecture tour in advance?+
No booking is required — this is a self-guided tour that you can start at any time. All buildings can be viewed from the outside. For guided tours with expert commentary, we recommend checking GetYourGuide for local architecture tours.
What is the best time to do the Porto architecture walking tour?+
Morning light (before 11am) is ideal for photography of building facades. Weekdays tend to be less crowded around commercial buildings. Allow a full half day for the complete tour.