ADOFF Arquitetos + paulosantacruz arquitetos Installation view at Palazzo Bembo, 2016.

ADOFF architects is an architecture studio founded in 2011 by António do Fundo Ferreira based in Oporto, where the usual “immaturity” of a young studio combines a strong sense of responsibility with a degree of experimentation in a constant research focused on the individuality and self-identity of each project.
The “synthesis” and the “strength of the idea” are the main objective of our work, where we try to find answers to the constant challenge of maximum expressiveness with minimal means and resources. We face tradition alongside innovation at the convergence of technical solutions which are more appropriate on every particular circumstances.
We believe that the relationship between the “material and immaterial”, crossing the available methods and means, with the culture and experiences of each place, is a determining factor in the authenticity of our work.
Time
The locker rooms of the sports pavilion stand as our first construction and mark this moment in a special way. The way we dealt with the timing of the project, the execution timing, and the future time were fundamental in the relation to the scarce available circumstances, not only in technical resources for implementation but also in the financial resources, being limited to a specific execution timing. We resorted to basic materials as “lightweight concrete block” and “glass brick” in order to configure the materialization of the entire construction process: summarizing the project to the formal clarity and the correct ratio of a continuous volume inserted in the site. The natural colour of concrete transmits an unfinished idea much like the place itself. Predicting the evolutionary potential of the project in time was decisive to the expanding strategy in a second phase which time would bring.
Space
In the current context of globalization, the concept of space design has been increasingly important in the quality of life that architecture can provide to those who inhabit the spaces. Controlar Headquarters is a technologic company where space requirements differ from traditional industry. The concept of intervention was based on the division of a large warehouse in different spaces, creating a new spatial dynamics: “add without touching” was a method of integrating our intervention and respecting what already existed. This approach generated the dynamic we searched for of space “within and between” boxes; what seems arbitrary in the floor plan is dictated by the metric of the box material itself, polycarbonate, searching for an overall spatial clarity. Controlar Headquarters is a project co-authored with the office paulosantacruz architects.
Existence
Quinta Vale do Conde stands as our approach in the relationship with marking pre-existence as an exemplary building of popular architecture in the region of Trás-os-Montes (northern interior of Portugal), in its materiality and construction technique, along with the surrounding rural landscape.
Once an oil mill, it will become an exhibition space related to its former activity. With a clear intention of maintaining the essential, the walls were restored in shale rock with the same construction techniques, where the new emerged in a formal continuity but in a different material. The design of the roofing is therefore the synthesis of our intervention. The dialogue between the different materials – stone and concrete – clearly and intentionally marks the contrast between the pre-existent and our approach.