The project intends to evoke the architectural landscape of the Azores, drawing upon the form and material that embed the collective memory of this island and archipelago, that have become, with time, a second nature of this place. Therefore the buildings are archetypal volumes, simple and compact, clad with the local basaltic stone.

This building asserts itself as the largest of the group to build around the lagoon. Being the most exceptional building, the Furnas Monitoring and Investigation Centre draws on an intermediate space between exterior and interior - the courtyard. This element results from a subtraction to the volume, cutting it from within the central zone (the vertex of the four roof fields) to the exterior limit of a facade thus enabling access to the interior.

This internal courtyard also becomes the point where the main internal compartments are revealed. These spaces, truncated by the subtraction that defines the courtyard maintain all relations between interior/exterior. The building was therefore conceived as a sculpture, as a block of raw matter that is intentionally cut into to capture light and the lagoon itself.