Marmelo Mill

Ricardo Bak Gordon

ARCHITECTS
Ricardo Bak Gordon

LOCATION
Portugal

CATEGORY
Factory

AREA
47723.0 m2

YEAR
2010

PHOTOGRAPHS
Fernando Guerra | FG+SG

MANUFACTURERS
Rodeca

Text description provided by architect.

The olive oil factory Marmelo Mill, was designed in order to answer all the functional requests to become the largest olive oil mill in Portugal, but also to reveal the attitude of the company regarding its cultural strategy respect to their clients and landscape.

The mill was designed in a way that it is as close to the olive trees as possible, and it is easy to recognize two different horizontal layers.

The one that attaches to the ground, which is dark and appears together with the peripherals walls of the property and the roads that involve the building.

Then, another layer, light and white that stands on top of the lower one, and extends itself to both sides, creating two cantilever structures that correspond to the external protected areas.

Here, during day and night, workers are protected from the winter rains and a kind of a huge lamp lights the whole working area.

From faraway this lamps act like a lighthouse, a reference to the landscape.