葡萄牙的犹哈沃市图书馆

大陈

ílhavo City Library, ílhavo / Portugal by ARX PORTUGAL


Project Details:
Location: ílhavo, Portugal
Type: Cultural – Public
Architects: ARX PORTUGAL (Nuno Mateus, José Mateus) – www.arx.pt
Project: 2002 – 04
Construction: 2004 – 05
Photography: FG + SG – Fotografia de Arquitectura
Awards: . Distinguished with the “International Architecture Awards“, The Chicago Athenaeum, EUA, 2006
. Selected for the “Prémio a la Obra de Arquitectura / V Bienal Iberoamericana de Arquitectura y Urbanismo”, Montevideo, Uruguai, 2006
. Selected for the exhibition “Habitar Portugal 2003-2005″, CCB, Lisboa, 2006



ílhavo City Library is located in the remains of the Manor Visconde de Almeida, a noble house from the 17th-18th century, later transformed and demolished. From the original building only the main fa?ade, oriented southeast, and the chapel, both in ruins, were left. There was no trace from the carriage porch which completed the building on the southwestern end. However, all elements remaining from the old construction were examples of qualified architecture, in their proportion and elegance of the masonry.





This type of legacy is rare in ílhavo and it was therefore assumed that it should be preserved and integrated in the new project.

The building is located on the periphery of the town, an area with little urban expansion, still fairly inarticulated and problematic. We chose not only to design an object, the library, but to intervene in the clarification and consolidation of urban fragments and volumes with no apparent overall coherence.