Ribeira Hub, galerias e coworking: requalificação arquitetônica do Edifício Presidente Café Filho.

Abstract

This project is a proposal of adaptive reuse to the President Café Filho’s Building, more known as Edifício do IPASE. Located at the boundaries within the neighborhood of Ribeira and Rocas (Natal/RN-Brazil), the building which were considerate as a landmark of modernization (in the 1950’s), because of its scale and its modernist design, nowadays, is identified as a damaged and obsolete building. Despite of the observed functional obsolescence in the building, the existing potential to an adaptive reuse is raised as a positive issue. Thus, the design proposals in this project aim to give to the building a new concept from the new facilities: Galleries and Coworking Spaces. These new facilities perform the building’s refurbishment, becoming a catalyzer of activities in the urban fabric, and creating new relationships with the other cultural equipment in the nearby area. The product of adaptive reuse in a potential heritage, aimed to preserve the aesthetical and architectural values from the existing building. At the same time, the new concept improved the building’s impact in the urban fabric, through the new users and new ways to use the spaces.