ALHANDRA, PORTUGAL 2006-2010 (with Matos Gameiro/ Carlos Crespo, architects)

The square of the Alhandra Church crowns the promontory, setting a terrace overlooking the town and the river, viewing the flatlands. The mortuary houses, attached to the church and cemetery, will regularize and give added significance to the present irregular geometry of the acropolis-square, formalizing it in correspondence with the mythical and transcendent nature of the site. We imagine a monolithic volume on the ground, as if it was a block of marble, expectant.

We take as reference the marble quarries, where channels are ripped to allow the extraction of the ore, to draw a pathway that delivers access to the various mortuary houses. Along this pathway strokes and scars of the imagined extraction are revealed, giving the surfaces of cut stone breaks and folds that allow to organize the lighting, to define benches or to let the light enter the chambers. In each chamber, through a continuing wood element, flooring, bench and doors are formed organizing the room. Within the memory of these gravestones spaces that the presence of the stone helps to recall, still emerge references to ancient excavations close to this place, as the ‘Senhor da Boa Morte’ on top of the hill with the same name.