Temporary Shelter Center | polo caritas, são miguel | azores | BOX arquitectos

In an approach to the homeless community, the building resolves the issue of immediate temporary support, providing basic living conditions as well as primary care.
Composed of three distinct social institutions, the space is generally distributed among, dormitories, recreational areas and administrative spaces.
Specifically, the interior program is defined by rest areas, composed of male and female dormitories, varying between single, double and triple units, living and recreation areas, being part of these, bar and cafeteria. The management offices, medical office and maintenance personnel rooms complement the basic functional program.
This program also includes work areas for temporary occupation, educational gardens and gardening areas, outside, cared for by the users of the institutions, contributing to their social integration.
The complex program shapes the building, in the hope that architecture will recreate environments according to the dignity of the users.
From the urban point of view, the building assumes the ability to design the surroundings, qualifying the neighborhood where it is inserted, structuring the urban development of part of the city, in a perspective of structuring urban expansion.
This structural responsibility is achieved by the absence of secondary facades, the building assuming distinct functions in each elevation, with a specific functional program in each one. If on the one hand the south elevation receives the main administrative entrance, the north elevation functions as a leisure area attached to the cafeteria. West reserves the entrance and development of workshops. East is linked to the reception of users of social support.
Properly, the building had to resolve, the entry of light into a body that although dynamic, assumed a considerable volume with the program necessarily turned inwards. Thus, the torn openings in the various roofs, allow the natural and constant lighting of the building, providing a functional use of the whole.
In its concept, the architecture of the building, exhaustively explores its implantation and confrontation to the marginal plan in all its elevations, also considering the roof as its fifth elevation. In this way, the project dialogues directly with the surrounding urban network, assuming itself with community unification, in a logical understanding of the city.