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Architects: STUDIO_LPP
- Area: 6027 ft²
- Year: 2009
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Photographs:Daniel Malhão
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Lead Architect: Luís Pedro Pinto
Text description provided by the architects. The location for this operation was on a long, flat strip of land, on the edge of the manufacturing complex, Valorsul - a waste treatment company in the metropolitan area of Lisbon - located in the industrial belt of Lisbon, along the north bank of the Tagus River. This building was compared with others already constructed (main factory building and incinerator) with very different and very affirmative architectural languages. Thus, building a sober piece, which did not rival the existing one, seemed to be the path to the project.
A single scale construction was proposed, a pure, longitudinal parallelepiped shape, where an entrance “place” with an exterior direction was defined, which would guarantee all the covered physical access to the interior program areas. This volume, with a single floor and 50 meters longitudinally, builds a new street front, where an abstract material - gray concrete - "perched" on a white stone garden - gravel - promotes another reading in the factory complex.
Inside, the different spaces (medical post, male spa, female spa and laundry) are available longitudinally to this distribution. Entrances and exits (separate) are made by metal windshields that will strategically occupy this distribution corridor. In the changing rooms, two central infrastructural areas are built which, placed in the center of the space, define two distinct areas - dirty area / clean area. These two areas contain all the equipment and infrastructure necessary to ensure an efficient and comfortable operation of the equipment.
To the concrete, on the facade, a continuous U-Glass plane (self-supporting translucent glass) is added to the facade. This “glassy” limit makes it possible to counteract a pre-made idea of what a bathhouse is, while guaranteeing the desired privacy, but giving a luminous dimension to the entire program.
