Betar

Sintra’s Palace of Justice

• Location: Sintra, Portugal
• Solution: Buildings
• Type: Civic, social and religious
• Architecture: António Nunes de Almeida
• Client: Ministery of Justice
• Scope: Foundations and structure, sewerage and water supply
• Area: 30750m2
• Project: 2001-2002
• Construction: 2002-2004
• Photography: FG+SG | Fotografia de Arquitectura / António Nunes de Almeida
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The building is located on a difficult topography, on a steep hill, with great unevenness. The large volume of the building is punctuated by the existence of several interior patios, allowing it to be clearly divided into several autonomous structural bodies, separated by expansion joints.

It consists of reinforced concrete structures, of framed type, with columns and structural cores, and flat slabs lightened with tripartite lightweight concrete blocks.

The west-facing blocks, with the largest number of floors, develop in a basement for parking, four elevated floors with terrace coverage and a visor that occupies part of the roof. The basement is located in this area of ​​the building and under the parking lot to the north, in order to take advantage of the unevenness overcomed by the main access road to the building.

The large south façade is accentuated by the framed structure made up of round steel columns, at the entire height of the building, which support the roof flange. Post-tensioning solutions were used on the slabs of the roof flange.

The foundations are of the direct type, through footings.