Architects:Estúdio Módulo

Area :7917 m²

Year :2019

Photographs :Nelson Kon

Lead Architects :Marcus Vinicius Damon, Guilherme Bravin, Andressa Diniz

Competition Collaborators : Daniel Korn, Manon Garcia, Raquel Andrade, Alessandra Figueiredo (revisão textos)

Structural Engineer : Engenheiro Miguel Marata

Coordinator : Marcus Vinicius Damon

Management : Guilherme Bravin

Executive Design Collaborators : Andressa Diniz, Fabiana Perazolo, Gabriela Galuppo Parisi, Jéssica Oliveira, Julia Dell'Acqua, Paula Máximo, Roberta Alecrim.

Landscape : Alessandra Figueiredo + Marcus Vinicius Damon

Concrete And Steel Structure : Beta 2 Engenharia

Electric, Telecomunications, Fire Protection, Sanitary And Water Protection : GRUPO VAEA

Air Conditioning : Meros & Silva

Building : Perville Engenharia e Empreendimentos

City : Joinville

Country : Brazil

The construction was as swift as that of a shed. The materials also do not differ that much from those employed in any industrial building. However, it is clear that the Ágora Tech Park is nothing alike the triviality of logistic factory buildings recurrently found on the margins of Brazilian highways. Estúdio Modulo has assumed that the Quality of a project does not come from the use of special and expensive materials. The Architects Marcus Vinicius Damon, Guilherme Bravin and Andressa Diniz make use of prefabricated building elements usually present in catalogs of companies in the national construction market. Nor do they conceive of elaborate details designed specifically for the building, the execution of which would require very specialized workmanship or almost handcrafted manufacture on the construction site. Therefore, in the Ágora Tech Park, Estúdio Modulo has set itself against those architects who sometimes have the understanding that their work as “epic”, which every millimeter needs to be drawn. The tectonics in the Ágora Tech Park is embodied with items from the industrial logic of large-scale production. The Authors appropriate this model also in the projectural reasoning based on the creation of systems. Due to this ode to pragmatism, the Joinville building was built between August 2018 and March 2019, the date of its opening. More than the Chinese speed in construction, it has been proved that, from the correct selection and arrangement of prefabricated materials, it is possible to conceive interesting architectural shapes and spaces.

The main facade itself is already didactic as it leads to the discovery of the main axis and the articulator: triple-height central space presents itself to the eyes as a starting portico for the Ágora complex, whose masterplan also is by Estúdio Módulo. The ragged floor plates 50 meters long esplanade enter the core of the building, impelling the visitor to get in. There are no distinctions on the floor between the inside and the outside, nor are there barriers to access the large, but outdoor, covered space. It is the central void that integrates all floors where all the building activities converge to it. All the functions of access, circulation, being and public gatherings come together – that is, in metonymic relationship, this is an agora in the project. The dimensions of space intersect as a square and the street, but in this aspect the closest analogy would be the 19th Century French and Italian generations – such as Vittorio Emanuelle II of Milan and Umberto I of Naples. Like the paradigmatic constructions, the grandiosity of the Ágora Tech Park central environment gives rise to a certain ceremonial air at the moment of the visitor’s entrance. However, such character does not diminish the liveliness of space: it is an environment of confluence of people coming and going. Anyone on their way to the workstation should pass through the core that connects the stairs, the corridors on longitudinal direction, the connecting crosswalks. The latter were interconnected in two building blocks of activity: the smaller is more compartmentalized and full of small spaces such as meeting rooms, pantries, toilets, stairs and elevators; The largest is an office-free floor plan with classroom division and layout independent of structure.