TENSAI HEAD OFFICES

Tensai is an industrial company engaged in the manufacture and marketing of domestic and industrial refrigeration equipment. The company has been growing in recent years and now is a market leader in this sector, in Portugal and Spain, exporting to lots of countries around the world. To meet this growth the TENSAI decided to move premises both in the manufacturing sector and the administrative sector.
The new administrative office building is located in northern Portugal in Oporto district in the town of Leça da Palmeira, a few hundred meters from the Atlantic Ocean, occupying two pre-existing houses built in the early twentieth century, part of a mostly residential area dominated by buildings with two-storeys, covered by a traditional roof. This typology is characterizing the surrounding blocks, although there have been some larger housing buildings constructed nearby.

LOCATED NEAR THE COAST OF MATOSINHOS, THE BUILDING TAKES A CLOSE RELATIONSHIP WITH THE SURROUNDING ENVIROMENT

The shape of the building has a geometric and formal simplification, with the decrease of the openings and the dematerialization of window frames, in order to clarify the new body design allowing light and shadow to draw the new surfaces, reinforces the reading of the body volume recreated.