Gallery

Description

Student’s Association temporary bar representing the Architecture of Oporto University.

Every year, the students  are invited to develop a project for a temporary bar to represent the school at an important academic event. The purpose of this initiative is to provide an ideal exercise in the form of a fast building architectural object. The predefined implantation area of 3x3 meters, the rapid construction and low budget are a few of the base principles to be taken under consideration. The project would be raised in few weeks with the help of student volunteers.

Inspirited by Kubrick’s Cube, this project takes wage as an iconic cube of light. Taking advantage of IKEA world and “do it yourself” philosophy, the bar presents as a textured box shape being itself composed of boxes that occasionally appear at different depths. After winning the 2008 Temporary Bar Contest, some adjustment were made to the budget allowing the bar to grow up to 4.7 meters high, thus becoming a referential element and rendezvous

Built in the course of one week, the bar was finished on site only one month after the jury’s final decision. Prearranged in secondary modular wood frames, a grand total of 420 boxes, were assembled on location to the main metal structure. Taking advantage of the translucent properties of the boxes material – polyethylene plastic – a big LED array was set inside allowing radical visual changes of the bar: an abstract white enclosed volume during daytime, by night-time a light box oscillating to the DJ’s sound. Night after night, the drinks were all sold out!

Biography

Diogo Aguiar was born in 1983 at Oporto, Portugal. During 2006 studied at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In 2008 concluded the degree in Architecture at FAUP, being now finishing his Integrated Masters degree. In 2007 begun his collaboration with the Dutch studio UNStudio, based at Amsterdam. Since 2009 he collaborates with the Lisbon based architecture studio ADPJMA. Diogo Aguiar has published several articles.

Teresa Otto is an Oporto born Portuguese architect that studied at the FAUP, and at the Facoltà Di Architettura Valle Giulia, Università La Sapienza, in Rome. During the course of 2006 and 2007, she worked with the architecture firm RCR Aranda Pigem Vilalta, located at Olot, Cataluña, Spain. Nowadays Teresa Otto is based at Lisbon, working with the studio Zinterl/Zt Architekten.