Pedrosa & Rodrigues Headquarters

The building was originally built in 1987, during the textile boom in Portugal and had 5 expansions until 1997. All this interventions were lacking proper design and were destined to fullfill imediate functional needs (needless to say that the building´s growth process was not harmonious and created incoerences both in function and form). In 1997 the client recurred to Oporto architect Alexandre Guedes de Oliveira to design a full renewal of the building. In this period the whole exterior skin of the building was changed, creating a unified look, more consistent and updated. At the same time, the whole reception area, commercial area, financial and administration spaces were also update to a fairly close state as they are today. The final renew process consisted on fine tuning the reception area, expand all commercial, financial and administration areas, creating employees areas (such as new locker rooms, social rooms, leisure areas and training areas), re-organization of the production layout and respective areas and simultaneously address and rethink the exterior of the building and it´s surroundings – making them fit for the continuous growth of emplyoees and growth vehicle movement from outsourced companies.