Panteão dos Almeida

A thematic exhibition, inside a historic Portuguese church, explores the intersection between an ethereal and minimalist architecture, with an existing architecture that is more than 800 years old, believing that these two realities can coexist and enhance each other.

The proposal seeks to lead the visitor along an immersive and transparent path, almost unreal, where we can cross layers of information, between the present and the past, both serving as a complement to the same exhibition and information. A kind of “analog” augmented reality assumes here the motto for the entire museographic project.

The proposal was materialized in the construction of a pine wood platform, placed on an existing clay floor, while peeling off the walls to give the impression of a floor that floats in space, as if it were a new layer of history, also allowing to perceive the existing floor, which tells a different story.

Defying the scale of the place, the proposal assumes different dimensions, rhythms and proportions of the exhibition structures, which are simple, ephemeral, transparent and, which manage with little volume and little material, to communicate with subtlety alluding to the sacred, a simplicity of constructive logic.

The wooden floor supports the metal structures of various dimensions, with glass that varies between 5m, 3m and 2m in height. These are embedded at a depth of 30 cm in metallic pieces, which make the ballast built by wood, support the weight of the structure. The various pieces are distributed throughout the museum space, according to a layout that follows the geometry of the building and takes advantage of verticality (and scale).

All the intervention has designed to be completely reversible and minimalist to avoid competing with the historical grandeur of the existing.