The new Vodafone Headquarters Building in Oporto is the result of a competition launched in 2006 which was won by the Oporto – based bureau, Barbosa & Guimarães. The aim was to build a place where all the company workers and main functions could be concentrated. In the Vodafone Building, the formalization of the concept results in a building with irregular and free – form shapes, creating irregular surfaces, which, through its plasticity, intends to resolve the dilemma of the office building, binding, corporate image and icon. On a plot with about 1,970 sqm, facing mainly one of the city's main streets – Av. Boavista – a monolithic volume based on a full concrete solution, “ seeking inspiration from painting, sculpture, photography, arts, which have already faced this dilemma ” as the architects say, tries to reflect the attitude and philosophy of Vodafone – Vodafone live, life in motion”.
 

Organisation of the working space

 The building itself is vertically organized across eight floors, five above ground and three in the basement. The ground floor, housing the three access points from Avenida Boavista, is mainly occupied by the lobby, the megastore organized on two floors, auditorium and cafeteria. On the four upper floors you will find open space offices and supporting space services. On the three lower floors there are an extension of the megastore, training rooms, technical areas and a car park. The offices are lit by natural light coming from continuous windows throughout the length of north and south elevations. The vertical access, elevators and staircases, are located on the building edges. This building core concentrates and distributes the large flows of movement in the building.Structurally, the building is based on a full concrete solution, with solid slabs supported on walls, cores, and some columns. The shell structure is made of a white concrete shell – compacted on the north and south elevations, growing in the perimeter of the building into multiple panels, performed in situ, using marine plywood formwork.
 

New architectural language

 David Adjaye once said: “Buildings don't have to look like buildings anymore, because they just don't have to”. Everything is turned into a two–dimensional view. We are no longer here to live the old manifestos such as form, function and meaning, which were built once upon collective memories. We want to see the end before we get to know the beginning.
 

Form still follows form

 Only the meaning and the frame of reference differ. However, the interesting thing about the Vodafone uilding is that form, rather than being an end in itself, is turned and becomes a vector of intensity, expressing the initial energies and intentions, binding the dilemma between architecture and representation. By introducing working forms and structural solutions that not only create a unique shape, but also a monolithic solution, bringing cohesion and unity to the set, the building becomes an autonomous body that reinforces the urban image. It's the old postulate: architecture must fit into the place. Here, the design criteria on which the postulates are based, allows both, external and internal space – unlike other office buildings, where a group of so called “experts” pre-determines the use and place, leaving the only thing for the architect to do is “join in” playing with the external form - program and form, their multiplicity of heterogeneous discourses are in constant interaction, between movement, sensual experience and conceptual acrobatics, reflecting the parallel with the visual gold. It's the old lesson: be functional in order to allow architecture to work.