Centrale elettrica Foz Tua

摘要

The story begins like this: a dam was to be built in an area listed as a UNESCO heritage site. First the dam was designed on the edge of the protected area but without taking into account the fact that the watercourse feeding the dam was within the UNESCO site. This was a big mistake. So, the electricity authority decided to commission an architect to design all the internal facilities, transformers and electrical structures, and I got the job. For the project, I took Braga stadium as my reference. There, I concealed everything that could not be left above ground. In the case of the power station, I put everything under a platform containing the machinery. Then, as in Braga, I devised a project that cut into the mountain, a kind of bunker. In the office, we prepared a large number of models to make it clear there was no building. All you see is a platform, like a table. This is how the project won over the UNESCO committee. Obviously, there had to be doors for the entrances and the machinery needed ventilation towers. Some of these forms could be confused with artistic gestures but they are actually just responses to the features and needs of this great infrastructure. I ensured the site was organised using just a few elements: a connecting bridge, the portico, the two cylinders in front of the main hall, bunker rooms on the lower level, a long strip of office windows and a sliding door for exiting trucks. Since it was an engineering job, I immediately realised that, as an architect, earning the respect of all the people engaged on the project would be crucial to the work's success. During construction there were, as always, a lot of discussions about the presence of an architect, including the risk of higher costs. Today, it is taken for granted that work should be done by specialists but I am not a specialist in anything. I just have to understand, coordinate and, most of all, discover the contradictions in the disciplines involved. One thing that Alvaro Siza taught me was that we are not specialists in anything but coordinators of everything. For the drainage system, setting aside all narratives on the system of the human body and without getting into 1960s' ideology, there is only one, pure and simple, analogy with the theme of nature and art. It is not clear which comes first or which copies the form of the other. Whether architecture borrows its forms from nature or it is the other way around. I enjoy thinking about this and I believe it is nature that imitates art. For the great underground chamber, I returned to the prefabricated beams used in the Matosinhos car park. I also developed a new air-conditioning system by redesigning the engineering works. This work method is the exact opposite of what happens today, when the engineers take the project over from the architects. Here, the engineering works already existed; I simply took them as they were and modulated the panels to my design, creating a sense of rhythm and taking care to make every line economical. Essentially, I reused what I found and placed my architecture at the service of the status quo.%La storia comincia così: doveva essere realizzata una diga in un territorio classificato come patrimonio UNESCO. Inizialmente, la diga era stata progettata ai margini dell'area protetta, ma non si era tenuto conto del fatto che il corso d'acqua che aziona la diga è compreso nella zona UNESCO. Questo è stato un grave errore. L'autorità per l'energia elettrica decise quindi d'interpellare un architetto per progettare tutti i servizi interni, i trasformatori e le strutture elettriche e, così, ho avuto l'incarico. Per fare il progetto, ho preso come riferimento lo stadio di Braga, dove ho nascosto tutto quello che non poteva stare fuori terra: così, per la centrale elettrica ho messo tutto sotto una piattaforma che contiene le macchine. Quindi, come a Braga, ho elaborato un progetto che taglia la montagna, una sorta di bunker. In studio abbiamo predisposto numerosi plastici per mettere in evidenza l'assenza di un edificio: si vede semplicemente una piattaforma simile a un tavolo. In questo modo, il progetto è stato ben accolto anche dalla commissione UNESCO. Ovviamente, servivano delle porte per gli ingressi, mentre le macchine avevano bisogno di torri di ventilazione. Alcune di queste opere possono essere confuse con gesti artistici, ma in realtà, esse sono semplicemente una risposta alle caratteristiche e alle necessità di questa grande infrastruttura. Ho messo un po' di ordine nel sito ricorrendo a pochi elementi: un ponte di raccordo, il portico, i due cilindri davanti alla grande sala, le sale bunker al livello inferiore, la lunga finestra degli uffici e una porta scorrevole per l'uscita dei camion.