M—AO

CECQ - Cultural and Education Center of Quarteira 
Competition, 3rd prize

Urban framework
The Cultural and Education Center of Quarteira (CECQ) corresponds to the creation of a Cultural Complex, an objective identified by the Loulé 2025 Strategic Program. As an intervention area delimited by two important access routes to the city of Quarteira, a proposal for a competition intended to implant in the city a Education and cultural center that encourages the development of a wider territory. In this location, which allows the drawing of two converging axes which connect the North to the South of the city, a new centrality is created that articulates and brings together what is apparently distant. This place of attractiveness must fix talent and creativity, as well generate local, national and international artistic networks. For this purpose, it was proposed a building with 4,367.00 sqm of footprint and 8,433.00 sqm of qualified Public Space boosting the contiguous Urban Park.

Concept
We do not believe in the word “concept” and especially in this project. We defend the idea of “process” essentially because the first concern is to respond to the specifics of the program, guaranteeing the autonomy of the buildings and the efficiency of the complex. 
The proposal aims this objective concern in a permanent balance between drawing and image. The lucidity of the proposal is mandatory and, therefore, the project can be read as a hand with 4 fingers (volumes) that articulate with each other. This hand reinforces the connection with the Urban Park. The “pavilion complex” proposes a contrast between a sensual gesture of the Foyer curve over the rationality of the volumes. We found in this proposed set the scale of the territory and the footprint works with the approaching notion into the CECQ complex: 1- By the point of view of the pedestrian (to the West) into the moment of discovering the edges of the building and its volumetric set; 2- the car moment (to the east) defining its urban front, its scale, its presence, its regularity and a game of full/ empty that proposes access to the complex and the Urban Park.