Porto
The West Building, designed by Álvaro Siza, consists of an extension to the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art. This building allows the Foundation to exhibit works from its collection on a rotating basis, as well as increasing the storage and archive space for its collection.
The building has three floors, two of them for exhibitions and one for archives, the latter located on the ground floor.
In general, the structural elements are made of reinforced concrete and are small in size. The compartmentalisation boundaries of the upper floors were used as vertical structural element planes that suspend the lower floor slab. Some of these planes were materialised with diagonals, favouring the possible transparency and flexibility of the space.
The connection to the existing building is via a gallery, at a higher level, which does not obstruct the existing road between the two buildings.
Given the proximity of trees and developed root systems that had to be preserved, the excavations were activated using an anchored pile containment curtain.
