This project was born around the Old Avianense Chocolate Factory block and the necessity of it’s revitalization, located in the historic center of Viana do Castelo, Portugal. Marked by the urban parameters defined in the Plan for the Historic City Center, and the opening of new thoroughfares that consolidate the urban system and allow the emergence of new urban spaces.

The former chocolate factory Avianense consisted of a heritage Art Nouveau building that has been respected, and two industrial buildings that once demolished, gave place to the housing building.

The “Chocolate Building” has been materialized in a compact volume that deforms from it’s immediate context and through the study of volumetric transitions between the block where it lies and scale and volumetry of Viana do Castelo’s historic buildings.

The facade or “surrounding skin” features a rhythm of spans – flush and void – whose proportion refer directly to the former factory ones. These new spans stage an abstract discourse, but also suggest different indoor-outdoor relationships within their context.