Miramar Tower is a 15-storey residential building in Porto whose spiraling balconies consolidate each floor into a continuous 360-degree terrace. Set at the center of its plot near Pasteleira Park, the project balances a compact floorplate with expansive outdoor rooms, articulating a concrete frame that negotiates coastal winds, daylight, and long views toward the Atlantic.
Miramar Tower Technical Information
- Architects: OODA
- Location: Rua Conselheiro Costa Braga 318, Porto, Portugal
- Gross Area: N/A m2 | N/A Sq. Ft.
- Project Years: 2019 – 2025
- Photographs: © Fernando Guerra
In a tower with a strong aesthetic drive, panoramic and dynamic balconies create both the concept theme and the opportunity for a plastic and sculptural exercise conceived entirely in concrete. We wanted something potentially unrepeatable, a habitable sculpture.
– Diogo Brito
Miramar Tower Photographs
Urban Context and Siting
Placed at the center of the plot, the tower maximizes setbacks that enhance daylight access, cross-views, and privacy for both residents and neighbors. The overall height aligns with nearby high-rises around Pasteleira Park, maintaining a consistent datum while introducing a distinct profile through the articulation of its terraces.
A low podium mediates between the street and the tower, consolidating the entry sequence and visually lightening the vertical volume at ground level. Oriented parallel to the road, the tower frames oblique views toward the Atlantic and moderates exposure to prevailing coastal winds by reducing broadside frontage. The combination of proportional continuity and morphological deviation situates the project in dialogue with local precedents without replicating them.
Spiral Massing and 360° Terraces
Each floor shifts the slab edges along the perimeter, generating an apparent rotation that reads as a spiral when seen in elevation. This sliding strategy produces continuous 360-degree terraces that wrap the dwellings, intensifying the perception of verticality while crafting a legible exterior ring at each level.
The design reallocates a significant portion of floor area to outdoor occupation, enabling perimeter gardens and individualized exterior rooms for every apartment. With only one or two dwellings per floor, the compact plan supports dual-aspect orientations and a clear stacking logic, allowing residents to occupy the full edge of the building and calibrate their privacy, exposure, and views according to orientation.
Structural Logic and Material Expression
The structural concept evokes a vertical dendriform system in which a stabilized core works in concert with peripheral supports to carry cantilevered slabs and their projecting balconies. The concrete frame serves both as a load-bearing structure and as the medium for the project’s sculptural reading, making the terrace edges the operative interface between tectonics and form.
Repetition with variation across levels requires careful balancing of slab thickness, cantilever length, and reinforcement detailing to prevent cumulative deformation while maintaining slenderness. The eccentric distribution of mass and exposure to coastal winds intensify torsional effects, which likely concentrate design effort on diaphragm action at the floor plates, robust connections at balcony roots, and meticulous waterproofing and drainage at slab edges where structure and envelope converge.
Environmental Performance and Spatial Experience
The deep, continuous balconies create a porous environmental buffer. Overhangs provide shading in the summer while admitting low-angle winter light. Planted edges diffuse wind at the facade, and perimeter access to operable openings supports cross-ventilation. By extending living areas outward, the terraces lengthen daily use across seasons and allow micro-adjustments to sun and wind throughout the day.
At ground level, an atrium with vegetation serves as a microclimatic foyer, bridging the gap between the street and the residential lobby, thereby enhancing thermal comfort and contributing to local biodiversity. Within the plan, common spaces open to long views and fluid circulation along the terrace ring, while private rooms remain more compartmentalized. The terraces mediate these zones, producing graduated thresholds that allow residents to tune visibility, acoustics, and enclosure without severing continuity with the exterior environment.
Miramar Tower Image Gallery
About OODA
OODA (Oporto Office for Design and Architecture) is an architecture studio based in Porto, Portugal. Founded in 2010 by Diogo Brito and Rodrigo Vilas-Boas, and later joined by Francisco Lencastre, João Jesus, and Julião Pinto Leite, the firm has grown into a multidisciplinary practice of over 60 collaborators. OODA approaches architecture with a commitment to contextual sensitivity, strategic thinking, and formal innovation. Their work engages both global ideas and local traditions, producing designs that respond intelligently to cultural and environmental conditions while pushing the limits of material expression.
Credits and Additional Notes
- Client: Rua Conselheiro Costa Braga 318 and Rua da Junqueira 362
- Photographs: Fernando Guerra
