Architects:Joaquim Portela Arquitetos

Area:596m²

Year:2021

Photographs:José Campos

Lead Architects:Joaquim Portela

Design Team:Marta Couto Rocha, Filipa Roque, Mafalda Martins, Emma Wang, Pedro Queirós, Patrícia Silva

Structure Design:A400 – Projetistas e Consultores de Engenharia, Lda.

Mechanical Installations:A400 – Projetistas e Consultores de Engenharia, Lda.

Electrical Installations:A400 – Projetistas e Consultores de Engenharia, Lda.

Hydraulic Engineers:A400 – Projetistas e Consultores de Engenharia, Lda.

Construction:Habinordeste – Sociedade de Construções, Lda

Client:Câmara Municipal de Bragança

City:Bragança

Country:Portugal

Text description provided by the architects. The Legal Innovation Center is located in the historic center of the city of Bragança. This building suffered several interventions over the years, to adapt to the different functions required. Some of these interventions defaced important areas of the building and required restoration.

Following the program required for the Legal Innovation Center, it was decided to enhance the relevant architectural features. As this building is part of the urban agglomeration of the historic center of Bragança, it wasproposed to maintain the volume of the existing building, keeping the main façade, the perimeter walls, rebuilding the roof with a wooden structure, the ceiling of the main room, the start of the stone stairs, the rear façade, the side shutters and the existing carpentry details. The project concept was based on the principle of continuing the monumentality of the existing stone stairway.

It was decided to give the staircase a new life, not with the initial reducing purpose for which it was created – to cause an impact of monumentality on those who entered the building with a uniquely scenic character – but to extend this monumentality to the entire building, defining a way, which at the same time creates/distributes the intended program for the building’s new function, and make this program more interconnected by the visual and continuous communication that the route allows.

Project gallery

Project location

Address:Bragança, Portugal