Charles Correa · 2010 · Lisbon
A threshold between science and the sea
The Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown, completed in 2010 on the Lisbon waterfront at the mouth of the Tagus, was the last major work of the Indian architect Charles Correa. Home to a foundation devoted to neuroscience and cancer research, it is conceived less as a laboratory than as a contemplative campus: two curved stone buildings frame a processional outdoor space that opens toward the water, ending in a pair of monoliths that stand like a gateway to the ocean — and to the unknown the centre is named for.
Correa clad the volumes in warm limestone and organised them around courtyards, gardens and an open-air amphitheatre, blending research, public art and landscape so that scientists and citizens share the same ground. It is a rare example of a scientific institution designed as civic architecture — monumental, symbolic and open to the city.