GRAÇA MORAIS ARTS CENTER

Project carried out within the scope of a public competition promoted by the Vila Flor City Council and the Portuguese Architects Association, for the construction of the cultural space "ENCONTRO DAS ARTES | ESPAÇO GRAÇA MORAIS", which will include several functions for the promotion of arts, culture and artistic expression, with the work of the painter Graça Morais as its theme." "Many of the faces I draw belong to women with marks, who have lived a long time and have never treated their skin with creams. This relationship with time fascinates me: reading it on other people's faces, in their eyes and wrinkles, like someone discovering the age of trees in their bark. A face at 60, stretched by a plastic surgeon, has no past." Graça Morais The same thing happens with buildings. The restoration of the pre-existing building, in the quest to safeguard and transmit a heritage heritage, will involve restoration work (repairs using the same construction methods and materials as the building) and rehabilitation work, making the existing elements compatible with current materials and technologies and introducing new equipment and infrastructure. On the other hand, on the adjacent plot of land, a building with an autonomous and contemporary style is proposed which, in response to the intended programme, occupies the entire plot of land and seeks volumetric relationships in dialogue with the adjacent buildings; it is an austere construction, with clear relationships with the surroundings: on each of the streets, its facades in textured white concrete, with a maximum height of two floors, feature the openings considered essential (an entrance on Rua Miguel Corte-Real and another, for loading and unloading, on Rua de S. Martinho). The present proposal paid particular attention to the interior spatial organization, adapting new uses to the existing spaces and, in the building from scratch, designing new spaces for the required uses, giving them new meanings. Inside, the designed spaces involve three courtyards that return the light; they are spaces that refer to the architectural form of the Graça Morais Arts Center and the vocations of its program (exhibition/creation). The complex is thus the result of a dialogue between a pre-existing structure that is being requalified and a unitary building in relation to its surroundings, with a thousand faces inside.