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Architects: Menos é Mais Arquitectos
- Year: 2006
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Photographs: Fernando Guerra | FG+SG
Text description provided by the architects. The Inapal Metal industrial unit is dedicated to the production of metal components for the automobile industry and is composed of two apparently autonomous volumes.
One volume consists of two wings and a huge cantilever that combine raw material storage and different sections of production and delivery; while the other consists of two floors where the technical and social areas of the program are arranged.
The architectural ‘parti’ as well as dealing with material homogenization and continuity, embraces as a strategy the structural modulation and constructive rationalization.
The research is focused on the ‘skin’ of the building. One unique surface material – trapezoidal metal-cladding – furnishes and unifies all the project solutions.
The versatility of the material regarding different applications and orientations is explored: revetments sheets when a closed space is required; metal-sheet cut in slices and fixed like honey-comb when is essential to shade, illuminate or ventilate.
The metal-sheet also allows the construction of curvilinear shapes which appeal to an aerodynamical iconography of the automobile industry.
