Located in Matosinhos, the new Wood Offices plot is located in a very dynamic and constantly evolving area, on one of the busiest axes in the area, close to services, public transport, colleges, and housing. Matosinhos is part of the Oporto Metropolitan Area and offers a unique combination of tranquility and urban convenience.

Although the project is mainly an office building, the community and nature are at the heart of the project. To articulate the surrounding public outdoor space with the private space, the first floor features outdoor areas and functions that punctuate the space and allow people to cross this floor, thus connecting the street front and the interior of the plot. The 4 accesses from the street to the interior of the plot, all along the new street, create a permeable and inviting ground level for the general public.

Aligning with the MASSLAB approach of designing public before private space, the functionality of the spaces at street level aims to offer to the city new public spaces, a set of squares with lots of green areas that invite the public to occupy them through common-use programs in the interior spaces of the floor, such as restaurant spaces, small shops, co-working, an auditorium, a bicycle park, and outdoor seating areas.

On the upper floors of the building are large office spaces and multi-purpose rooms for workers. The stepped volumetry defines public and private terraces and landscaped balconies on all floors, ensuring good health, lighting, and contact with nature inside. The floors can be accessed via distribution halls with stairs and elevators, equidistantly within the plot.

One of the main features of the project is its ecology and environmental-oriented design approach which proposes a wooden structure to capture CO2 as opposed to a more traditional structure. A green area is also designed with the Tiny-Forest concept, an area approximately the size of a tennis court that contains 600 trees, maximizing the benefits per square meter of land to enrich the biodiversity of fauna and flora, while contributing to the microclimate of the plot and its surroundings.

Targeting to achieve green certification, such as LEED, the project requires various factors to be taken into account, such as the choice of certified materials, and the types of services to be offered, like bicycle park, rainwater collection, solar orientation, sun exposure, internal comfort, and energy use.

The height of the proposed building is intended to articulate the image and morphology of the surrounding buildings, which have very high ceilings on the west side and lower ceilings on the other sides - with buildings of up to 4 floors. The proposal thus extends over 5 floors, with a gradual volumetry and only a small part going up to the fifth floor, diluting the possible visual and formal impact on the context in which it is inserted. The plan articulates and sews together the different contexts that characterize the existing surroundings with the stepped form and the nature present at all levels.