ARCHITECTURE:
Victor Mestre and Sofia Aleixo - VMSA arquitectos
_______________________________________________
ADDRESS:
Praça José Justino Lopes nº 1 e 3, Almada
_______________________________________________
CITY:
Almada
_______________________________________________
DATE:
2007-2010
_______________________________________________
VISIT:
Inside Conditioned - Outside
_______________________________________________
MORE DETAILS:
Nursery and Kindergarten of Ramalha (Cidade de Almada Architectural Prize 2008-2010)
The secular Ramalha Farm, consisting of a small architectonic set of historical/heritage value, is located in a consolidated urban area resulting of the Almada city extension in the 80s/90s of the XX century. The valorization of this Farm in heritage terms developed from the restoration of the Chapel and the secular building, which was the heart of the project, because it came to establish the scale of the intervention. The new building of the kindergarten sought to restore to the north, the continuity of the pre-existing residential buildings, establishing the maximum altitude. To the West benefited from the deployment of a small white concrete building mediating the set with the historical building. This introduced the “scale and the imaginary of the child” by proposing a volume, whose spatiality takes us, through the high ceiling, to the children stories.The new building to the north in the face of the urbanity in presence seeks to quote expressions of the city and modernist architecture. The entire set is developed around a courtyard, in order to release the Farm building.