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M-ODU: Kengo Kuma's Biophilic Vision for Porto's Industrial Heritage
Photography by Claudine Boeglin
M-ODU is the brand name of one of the most ambitious cultural and service-based post-industrial regeneration projects in eastern Porto, developed by
Mota-Engil MEXT.
The blueprints, signed by Japanese architect
Kengo Kuma in partnership with Porto-based
OODA, draw an ambitious, generous, and elegant composition that preserves the original choice of materials and style of Porto's massive 20th-century slaughterhouse.
The regeneration is biophilic in essence, circular in its approach to recycling, with community inclusion at its heart.
Kuma's exhibition "Onomatopoeia" at
Casa da Arquitectura in Porto narrates his vision of built environments enmeshed in natural spaces, breathing into one another as a feedback loop. His architecture, made of flexible imprints and open circles, escapes traditional choreography.
For M-ODU, Kuma deploys his serpentine shapes and creative mantra of nature and humans inside out, once more demonstrating how human-made forms can mimic the dynamics of climate and the biosphere.
The half-covered roof—undulating translucent panels screwed solidly—plays with daylight, swinging softly along the wind, designing patches of shade along the staircase to the pedestrian bridge that gazes at the highway. At its epicenter, M-ODU brings humans and nature to the heart of the post-industrial, car-focused landscape, with virtual wings to fly beyond…
Photography Claudine Boeglin @dandyvagabond
Photography and text Claudine Boeglin
