Summary, architecture studio founded by Samuel Gonçalves. He has designed a multi-service and housing building in Vale de Cambra, Portugal. The building uses the Gomos modular prefabrication system, using a series of reinforced concrete elements.

The building sits sits on a double level explanation. A façade set back towards the street, and another that is offset from the ground to coincide with the highest level of the terrain. Exercise that studies the position of architecture in relation to the ground and its topographic variants.
The Summary project grants a public space to the city, achieved by the setback of the building, providing commercial areas for flexible use, removing and putting up partitions according to the needs of the users. Multiple use areas that are organized from slabs and prefabricated structural panels arranged in modules.

On the first level, six 45 m² rooms were built, with differentiated access for each one. Change and modification scenarios that optimize spatiality using a series of variants in the same module. The project manages to reinterpret the prefabrication of reinforced concrete, reducing resources, energy and used labor, a new approach to building.
 

Project description by Summary

After the release of a prototype and the exhibition in La Biennale di Venezia, SUMMARY studio unveils the newest project using their prefab and modular building systems.
 
The requirements for this project were boldly defined from the beginning: the construction should be fast, cost effective and changeable over time, which prompted the studio to use prefabricated elements and to leave parts of the project undefined, assuming the immediacy, flexibility and resources optimization as core themes.    

The strategy was clear: a ground floor level for the multi-services program connected with the public space, crowned by the individual habitational units (six cabins with 45m2). Due to the differences between these two programs, it was created an independent access for each one, placing them in different levels and taking advantage of the natural ground’s slope.

The ground floor is shaped by prefabricated slabs and structural panels in the external perimeter. This area was conceived in a very flexible way: it’s possible to add or remove compartments or let the whole floor functioning as a big open space. Thus, the users may adapt the space according to their needs.

The first floor is all composed of Gomos System units. Considering that the maximum building area permitted by law was quite small, the requested empty space was used to separate the housing units. Designed and licensed as a collective housing building, with this feature this project offers the main advantages of single houses: clearly individualized entrances and a complete acoustic separation between the different units.

In the whole building, the structural material - precast concrete - is directly exposed, without any additional finishing, thus reducing the resources, the manpower and the arts involved in the construction process and, consequently, reducing its environmental impact. This approach has a direct effect in the acceleration of the building process: all its components are fully prepared in factory and quickly assembled in situ, performing at once as structure, insulation and cladding elements.

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Architects
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Summary. Project Leader.- Samuel Gonçalves.
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Project team
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Samuel Gonçalves, Inês Rodrigues, João Meira, Gonçalo Vaz de Carvalho.
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Collaborators
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Engineering.- FTS, Technical Solutions.
Prefabrication and Assembly.- Farcimar, Soluções em Pré-Fabricados de Betão.
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Area
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998 m²
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Dates
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2019
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Photograph
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SUMMARY is a young architecture practice based in the Science and Technology Park of University of Porto, in Portugal, founded by Samuel Gonçalves in 2015. Seeking the balance between pragmatism and experimentalism, this practice develops prefabricated systems addressing a prominent challenge of contemporary architecture – to accelerate and simplify the building processes.

The practice is led by Samuel Gonçalves (architect | founder), João Meira (architect | project manager), Adina Staicu (architect) and Luca Sabbadini (architect |VR programmer).
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Published on: June 1, 2020
Cite: "Reinterpreting modular prefabrication systems. Vale de Cambra by SUMMARY" METALOCUS. Accessed
<https://www.metalocus.es/en/news/reinterpreting-modular-prefabrication-systems-vale-de-cambra-summary> ISSN 1139-6415
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