Page 20 - MODUS NEWS 03

ARX PORTUGAL
PORTUGAL
Ílhavo
The Ílhavo Maritime Museum Extension showcases a codfish aquarium, connecting two buildings and siting a complex ensemble around the subjects of the sea and fishing. In this unusual structure, the Maritime Museum is the place of memory, the Aquarium is a space for marine life, and the Laboratory for Ocean Sciences (CIEMAR), installed in an old renovated school, functions as the research center for activities linked to the sea.
In articulating these three units, the building is both an autonomous urban facility that relates to the context and defines the public space, and also a building-path, which develops in a spiral around the tank as it connects the Museum to the old school.
In the context of small, scattered houses, it is shaped by the interstices of this urban, domestic fabric and establishes a new, public domain. But in doing
so, it breaks into two horizontally overlapping bodies, searching for a scale of transition. In its duality, the white concrete body emerges from the ground and sets the basis for defining a square. The floating black body of metal scales sets the height of the square in a public urbanity redefined into three dimensions.