La Biennale di Venezia - 15th International Architecture Exhibition

Venice, Italy
Photo © Tiago Casanova
Photo © Tiago Casanova
Photo © Tiago Casanova
Photo © Tiago Casanova
Architects
SUMMARY Architects
Location
Venice, Italy
Year
2017
Prefabrication
Farcimar, Soluções em Pré-Fabricados de Betão
Video Credits
Building Pictures

In the 15th edition of the Venice Biennale, Alejandro Aravena invited us to look at new fields of action, projects that intend to improve life quality and stories of success that are worth getting to know. Thus, Samuel Gonçalves, founder of the SUMMARY studio (www.summary.pt), the youngest studio invited, was selected to present his work “infrastructure-structure-architecture” with the purpose of showing the concept behind his project Gomos System (vimeo.com/144377983).

The Biennale exhibits two infrastructural pieces and a Gomos System piece, so that we can get to know some elements that are part of its core. This installation also includes a table set with two screens that simultaneously play two videos made by Building Pictures. These videos are exclusive of the exhibition and they allow a comparison between the constructive process of the infrastructure as well as the constructive process of Gomos System itself (vimeo.com/168989733).

The project consists of a flexible and evolutionary constructive system based on concrete units. It’s a modular system in which each module comes completely ready from factory with all its finishes and equipments and it’s all assembled in loco. Thus it allows us to raise buildings in 3 months (3 days on site), within a period 6 times lower than Portugal’s building-rate average, without compromising its structural quality.

According to the architect, “it’s not about inventing, but about reinterpreting - we take a pre-existent constructive system often used in water drainage infrastructures and we transpose it to a habitable constructive system. In structural matters as well as constructive ones, Gomos System is identical to reinforced concrete water pipes”.

Related Projects

  • Promenade Favorita, Lugano TI
    mavo gmbh
  • Garten Höhenweg St.Gallen
    mavo gmbh
  • Sagiareal, Greppen LU
    mavo gmbh
  • Progressiver Reinraumausbau
    Lindner Group
  • Büro Allmendstrasse
    BFB Architekten AG

Magazine

Other Projects by SUMMARY Architects

1000m2 prefabricated
Vale de Cambra, Portugal
Paradinha
Aldeia da Paradinha, Alvarenga, Portugal
Gomos
Arouca, Portugal