This space of the Quadrado Azul gallery was originally transformed by the artist Fernando Lanhas. His intervention in this space, like his visual art, was subtle and sensitive: he suspended an arch and an inverted triangle from the ceiling to conceal the building’s suspended infrastructure, and finished the back of the space with a portico featuring a central entablature, painted ochre. This architectural project preserves and restores the magnificent intervention by the legendary artist from Porto, for whom the author has a deep admiration. To complement and update the gallery’s features, the ceilings between the aforementioned geometric figures are conceived as continuous planes of light, emphasising the presence of these reconstructed forms. Furthermore, only a few alignments of the existing walls were corrected to achieve greater spatial continuity and exhibition space; a counter and a storage door were integrated, whose material abstraction establishes a dialogue with the figuration of Lanhian elements, and the geometry of the exhibition surfaces was adjusted. On the ceiling, beyond the entrance, a suspended quarter-sphere volume was introduced, simulating the winding of the pre-existing security roller shutter (although it actually winds into a square box) but which, ultimately, aims to provide temporal continuity to the timeless concept of space envisioned by the architect Fernando Lanhas. The entrance hall is defined by the guides of the security roller shutter, the aluminium carpet and the grey-clad surfaces, mimicking the powder-coated finish of the shop’s aluminium frames. This muted, neutral colour emphasises the brightly lit, white surfaces of the gallery and contrasts with the ochre plane chosen by the painter Fernando Lanhas to demarcate the space at its opposite end.
project:
transformation of
quadrado azul art gallery 2
client:
quadrado azul art gallery
location:
miguel bombarda street,
porto, portugal
date:
2025
building area:
180 m2
architecture:
nuno brandão costa
collaborators:
bruna kuhn, luís filipe carreno
electrical engineer:
raúl serafim (rs associados)
photographs:
andré cepeda