Pátio de Santiago
Concurso Biblioteca Municipal e Museu do Brinquedo de Torres Vedras, Portugal; Competition
KWY.studio (Ricardo Gomes with Sara Lopes, Luise Marter, Gabriela Raposo and André Santos) Engineering: Betar
Baldios: Armando Neves Ferreira, Catarina Raposo, Joana Marques, Pedro Gusmão, Samuel Alcobia and João Antunes
Our proposal for the Library and Toy Museum of Torres Vedras focuses on the dialogue with the historical heritage of the city. The functional distribution follows a square grid oriented north-south: this organisational device is a powerful response to the complexity of the surrounding urban space that developed organically for more than two centuries. Pátio de Santiago represents a patch in the urban fabric, a building that hosts two functions – the public library and the toy museum – and gives continuity to the adjoining urban facades. Starting from these limits the volume is gradually deconstructed and opens towards the south creating distance from the Igreja de Santiago. This geometry allows the building to be open in its interior, creating a patio generated by the absence of the constructive grid in space. The façade progressively retracts in multiple terraces creating a negative volume that expands vertically towards the Castle.
The two functions intertwine spatially, distributed between the interior spaces and the public space generated from the deconstruction of the grid: the exterior resonates with the segmentation of the interior through the arches of the coutyard. Pátio de Santiago’s generating principle is a central space that organizes the program along two perpendicular axes (within three floors) and one conceptual axis diagonal to the two previous axis that emphasises the relation between the generated public space with the planimetric and altimetric decomposition of the building allowing a visual connection towards the Castle. The materials of the building, clay-coloured concrete and limestone, integrate with the natural tones dominating the region (both the farming lands and the beaches of the West) and mimic the material of the historic buildings that were an influence to our proposal.
Concurso Biblioteca Municipal e Museu do Brinquedo de Torres Vedras, Portugal; Competition
KWY.studio (Ricardo Gomes with Sara Lopes, Luise Marter, Gabriela Raposo and André Santos) Engineering: Betar
Baldios: Armando Neves Ferreira, Catarina Raposo, Joana Marques, Pedro Gusmão, Samuel Alcobia and João Antunes
Our proposal for the Library and Toy Museum of Torres Vedras focuses on the dialogue with the historical heritage of the city. The functional distribution follows a square grid oriented north-south: this organisational device is a powerful response to the complexity of the surrounding urban space that developed organically for more than two centuries. Pátio de Santiago represents a patch in the urban fabric, a building that hosts two functions – the public library and the toy museum – and gives continuity to the adjoining urban facades. Starting from these limits the volume is gradually deconstructed and opens towards the south creating distance from the Igreja de Santiago. This geometry allows the building to be open in its interior, creating a patio generated by the absence of the constructive grid in space. The façade progressively retracts in multiple terraces creating a negative volume that expands vertically towards the Castle.
The two functions intertwine spatially, distributed between the interior spaces and the public space generated from the deconstruction of the grid: the exterior resonates with the segmentation of the interior through the arches of the coutyard. Pátio de Santiago’s generating principle is a central space that organizes the program along two perpendicular axes (within three floors) and one conceptual axis diagonal to the two previous axis that emphasises the relation between the generated public space with the planimetric and altimetric decomposition of the building allowing a visual connection towards the Castle. The materials of the building, clay-coloured concrete and limestone, integrate with the natural tones dominating the region (both the farming lands and the beaches of the West) and mimic the material of the historic buildings that were an influence to our proposal.
