Ricerc@Sapienza

The EDP Headquarters in Lisbon, built by Aires Mateus in 2015, looks like a landmark on the riverside. This building consists of two emerging bodies joined by an underground base, which are arranged transversely between the Tejo and the hill of Santa Catarina, so as not to constitute a visual obstacle between the city and the river. The two bodies delimit a large shaded square, which diagonally cuts across the ground floor of the building, ensuring spatial continuity from the road and allowing transverse flow. The volume is entirely enveloped in “tectonic textures.” The discontinuous structure, consisting of a dense sequence of steel uprights to which white concrete blades with variable profile are attached, establishes the order and size of the building through the alternation of full and empty spaces. This tight rhythm creates a graduated and changing effect of light and shadow, which generates a facade that is always different as the light and the observer’s viewpoint change. This building is part of Mateus’ architectural research on the deformation of basic volumes and the dialectical relationship between heaviness and lightness.