Vodafone Head Office in Porto, Portugal
January 13, 2010 - By Bobby Solomon - Category: Architecture & Design
The architects at Barbosa e Guimaraes Arquitectos are clearly trying to show the Japanese that they’re not the only one who can create beautifully minimal buildings. They’ve created the amazing building you see above for Vodafone in Porto, Portugal where it acts as their main office. I’m totally smitten with this building. Though the materials are simply, the dimensions of the building definitely are not. The building starts to look like a giant, faceted jewel, the angles coming in and out seemingly randomly. Inside it’s just as minimal with recessed lighting that looks to me like glowing cracks in the facade.
I think it would be great to work in a building like this. I think every morning I’d walk up with a bit of a smile on my face. Photos by Fernando Guerra.
Found through We Heart
Bobby
Comments
If you've got something to say, keep it positive.lovely
In Porto you can find architectural works that also are very interesting, like
Casa da Musica (by Rem Koolhaas): http://www.casadamusica.com/Default.aspx?langSite=eng
or
Museu de Arte Contemporanea da Fundacao de Serralves (by Alvaro Siza Vieira): http://www.serralves.pt/
Nice one.
I’m very proud of this feature. The photographer is (was, but will always be) my teacher and a respectable figure in Portuguese architecture.
The building design is really nice and appealing, but then someone thought about ruining it placing the logos. Not only it is very uninspired but also very dispensable visual information in a building with such a recognizable shape like that… energy and money consuming detail…
i passed near the vodafone building, this night…. really nice to found it here.
Actually, this building stands in the same avenue as the Casa da Música, by Rem Koolhaas. Josep Maria Montaner has called this “diffuse ecletisms”, influences that people absorb not even knowing what they are absorbing and why they are doing it.
The two buildings are 2 km away from each other (tops).
This Building, the Vodafone headquarters, behaves like it is on the same scale as Casa da Música, perhaps not recalling that, in fact, this is a private equipment and not a public one…
And, if you actually could see the area where the building is built, you would see that it simply doesn’t fit. It behaves like an alien, screaming for attention.
Of course the purpose of Vodafone was fulfilled, but surely the interests of the city of Porto itself weren’t…
This really looks no more than a totemic architecture, whose purpose is just to deliver “something new”, even if that something new isn’t that new in fact, and just some show-off by a private company. (the last two images are taken from spaces that no one that doesn’t work in Vodafone will be able to see…)
But of course, in the end, one can do nothing but be mesmerized with these photos and, what’s more, all the publicity the building gained will make it profitable…
Capitalism 1 – 0 Porto
Gorgeous!
I wish there were interesting, iconic, totemic buildings like this in the town in southern Italy where I live, Marsala Sicily.
Love it!
hi guys, this building is very nice and represents an important case study of architectural branding as the vodafone brand totally formed the building both inside and outside.
Does anyone know what to do, to visit this building? as I’m currently working on my dissertation related to architectural branding and it would be nice to consider this building as one of my case studies.
Please, who knows about opening hours to visiting this building.