MISSION AND OBJECTIVES

The Mission of the OASRN N41 project is to promote architecture, creativity and sustainability by encouraging research, practical training, spread information on emerging themes and staging debates linked to these areas of professional practice.

The Vision of N41 is creative sustainable architecture.

N41 will also manage the construction of the new OASRN facilities, where its facilities will be located.

N41 is specifically aimed at architects, developers, students, policymakers, creative industry and construction professionals plus all those who are interested in the themes of Architecture, Creativity and Sustainability.

The central Purpose of the N41 is to Support Creativity and Sustainability Research within Architecture; Encourage Creativity and Sustainability Training; Promote Architecture as a key Creative Industry Sector; Highlight good examples of Architectural best practice;

WHY NORTE 41º (N41º)

The parallel N41 ° crosses the globe in key cities in the history of architecture such as Porto which is aligned with cities like Chicago, New York, Barcelona, Rome, Istanbul, or Tbilisi. N41º Advisory Council will include members from these cities, in order to develop this net.

project description

North 41 is intended to be a reference project at the level of rehabilitation of buildings with heritage value, with the application of techniques allowing to reconcile the parameters required for sustainability and the requirements of respect for the integrity of heritage buildings. This is an innovative approach in implementing the recommendations of environmental sustainability at the level of utilization of rainwater and wastewater, energy efficiency from the use of materials, technologies and equipment of high performance level of buildings, street lighting, mobility and improving the urban environment. This innovative feature allows N41º to address a problem that arises today in terms of urban regeneration, and with increasing expression in the context of rehabilitation of buildings in older urban centers, suffering from symptoms of population and functional depletion.

case study

Although then already fully licensed, the new board of OASRN and N41 ° took the initiative to revise the design of its new facility at Rua Alvares Cabral, 136-150, in the context of sustainability and energy efficiency issues, in order to serve as demonstration, capable, not only, to gain a performance compatible with the new legislation, but rather to serve as a case study of reflection on sustainable urban regeneration with a high degree of replicability on analogous rehabilitation processes.
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This will be an anchor project for intervention in urban regeneration in this nineteenth-century street of Porto, of great significance and great urban architectural quality of buildings, currently in the process of classification. It consists of the rehabilitation of two of these buildings, through a project that resulted from the program and architectural competition launched in 2004, which resulted in winning the NPS architects studio of  Rui Neto, Odete Pereira, and Sergio Silva.
In the design of the new headquarters, we test three different situations:

Restoration: where you cannot change the finishing neither the outside, nor the inside;
Renewal: where the state of degradation reached inside, one can study the change of the interior finishing;
Expansion with new construction: where it is possible to think of complete solutions.