Vila do Bispo Museum


Preserving the identity of the place and the characteristics of the building in question gave us the motto for the intervention. Therefore, we proposed the addition of a new volume to the existing construction, as if replicating the shape of the contiguous ships, appealing to an idea of urban and formal continuity, but at the same time, being able to call itself an identity of its own capable of constituting itself as the main entrance of the set and assuming its intervention in time, valuing and safeguarding the image of the existing building.

The new volume extends to the southern limit of the lot, housing the technical, administrative, and social functions, thus freeing the entire inner core of the existing "warehouses" to receive the exhibition area, thus assuming the most important function of this intervention.

The two previously existing naves, with about 680m2 of covered area, take on a more neutral color, gray, to homogenize them and ensure their formal abstraction. Inside, this same nave is covered in black to highlight the dynamic form that receives the exhibition, a kind of organic footprint, which creates thematic exhibition bags and organizes the exhibition route clearly and intuitively.

In contrast to this attempt at the chromatic abstraction of the existing, the new volume appears, totally in apparent concrete, for which we propose a red pigmentation, assuming itself as a reference point in the urban and aerial landscape, indelibly marking the territory. This formal "end" of the existing recreates the form of this in a delicate way, in a balance between full and empty, which hierarchizes entrances, living spaces, and relationships with the surrounding landscape.

The result is a museum that gives the idea that it has always existed there, both for the older ones who remember the barns and for the younger ones who remember the red museum, which is part of the collective image of the population.