Santa Maria do Bouro.Construir uma pousada com as pedras de um Mosteir - nuovo livro

Building a Pousada using Stones from the monastery This Project was designed in order to adapt, or rather, to make use of the stones available to build a new building. It is a new structure, in which various assertions and functions intervene (some already registered, other still to be constructed), not a reconstruction of the building in its original form. For this project, the ruins are more important than the "monastery", since they are an available, open and easy-to manipulate material, just as the building was along its history. This attitude is not meant to establish an exception, by attempting to achieve the originality of a manifesto, but rather to abide by an architectural rule more or less unchanged in the course of time. For this project, we tried to reach lucidity between form and program during the "design process". Faced with two possible paths, we chose to reject the mere consolidation of the ruin as a contemplative object, opting instead for the introduction of new materials, uses, forms and functions "entre les choses", as Le Corbusier used to say. The "picturesque" is a question of fate, not the intent of a program. Eduardo Souto de Moura