ABSTRACT
Portugal's northern city of Porto was the Cultural Capital of Europe in 2001. The old city flanks the steep slopes where the Duoro River meets the Atlantic Ocean and it has a rich architectural heritage as the distribution point for Port wine to the rest ofthe world. More recently, several new architectural projects have been woven into the city's urban fabric. Specifically to celebrate the major cultura I event of 2001, Porto decided to build a new concert house, the Casa da Musica. A design competition was won by OMA, the Office for Metropolitan Architecture led by Rem Koolhaas, with Arup's Cecil Balmond heading the structural engineering consultants. Located along the perimeter of the large traffic roundabout of the Rotunda da Boavista, this building is articulated as an autonomous object on its own public square: its impressive bulk and faceted appearance made of white concrete sits on an undulating plaza that is covered with beige travertine, professed to be a skateboarders' heaven. The team designing Casa da Musica employed a rich variety of materials ranging from innovations of modern technology to those more closely connected to traditional Portuguese heritage and crafts. Some of these materials are clearly structural, while others not; and even though our study of materials in this chapter is primarily focussed on structural capacity, we should also bear in mind that such materials always appear within the context of an even richer palette of materials that are used for other purposes.
