projects | Viabizzuno progettiamo la luce

an old farmhouse, ‘solar dos sa vargas', that became over the years the bank of portugal branch office, comes today to a new life through the restored shapes of bragança contemporary museum spaces. within this volume built in the old town, the architect, eduardo souto de moura imagined readily an arts centre, a polyvalent space able to merge with the pre-existing building and even make it evolved, giving the city a different face and offering a service totally different from a traditional museum. the original building has been restored according to purity and formal correctness criteria that have well preserved its long history. close to this building another new one has been designed for the exhibiting purposes. old and new, history and contemporaneity join together in an unique path that spontaneously cross from the patina of time to the brightness of the newly built. this architectural microcosm is house of the natural evolution under which buildings are subject over the years up to reaching a perfect integration within our cities. the combination of these two main buildings resulted into an element meeting both reception and artworks exhibiting purposes; in addition to that, a little patio with direct access from the exterior has been built. the ground floor of the ancient ‘solar' is completely conceived for the reception area, the restaurant and the book shop which also offers a reading corner for the clients. the permanent exhibitions can be visited at the first floor whereas the large artworks are displayed on the second floor. a considerable relevance was given to a space for realisation of art creations, an atelier, a laboratory, a workshop for new ideas. the light project perfectly integrates with formal but substantial simpleness of the intervention: the 094 system straight cuts the floors with sobriety, letting light to tell its story; the several bacchetta magica act as graphic lines to narrate with light the displayed art pieces. once entered the museum, the careful restoration work made to the building is immediately perceptible, but, at the same time, so natural and so specially designed for those spaces, that the visitor becomes fully aware of the consistency and thought of this architecture only at the end of his tour. outside the museum, the visitor realizes that, through his experience, he got a sense of the occurred transformation; our glance, our steps, out thoughts became part of the volumes, letting the story of an ancient building to softly join with a new one, letting contemporary art to find space for its expression, letting these paths to mix with the city streets. the human evolution over the ages clearly appears to our eyes and comes to our mind. when in 1914 le corbusier proposed the ‘domino' structure, he didn't know that he was creating postmodernism.. when on june 6th 1984 italo calvino was invited by harvard university to pronounce the ‘six memos for the next millennium ' he was unaware that he was proposing the principles for a new architecture… when someone (whose name i don't remember) invented plasterboard to cover the ‘domino' structure, he was pursuing le corbusier and italo calvino… when einstein solved the dichotomy regarding the nature of light (foton versus wave) with the ‘blackbody' theory, he didn't know that lighting buildings would be different… when in 2003 mario nanni, designed the ‘sistema 094', he didn't know or think about le corbusier, plasterboard or einstein… when someone, with a dark body, a fissure, illuminates spaces and indicates pathways like those in the ‘bragança musem', nobody understood his consistency… and that was our wish. p.s. the six memos for the next millennium are: 1 lightness 2 quickness 3 exactitude 4 visibility 5 multiplicity and 6 consistency, which in the meantime was never written.