Detail of the project ed. 2024

ced­ofei­­ta-church / Portugal

Design­er António Jorge de Moura Leitão Cere­jeira Fontes
Loca­tion Largo do Pri­o­ra­do 72, 4050–466 Porto
Nation Por­tu­gal
Design Team

Lead Archi­tects: António Jorge Cere­jeira Fontes, André Cere­jeira Fontes

Nuno Cruz
Cristóvão Piairo
António Dias
Bruno Marques
Duarte Vilaça
Mafal­da Ribeiro
Year 2018
Pho­to credits

Exte­ri­or 1 and 2 — Jaime Silva
Exte­ri­or 3 — Vitor Oliveira
Exte­ri­or 4 and 5, Inte­ri­or — José Campos

Pho­to external

Project descrip­tion

This reha­bil­i­ta­tion comes as a response to the dev­as­tat­ing 2017 fire that destroyed the bap­tismal chapel of the church. Despite the effort to respect the pre­vi­ous inter­ven­tion, which took place in the 1990s, this reha­bil­i­ta­tion par­tic­u­lar­ly seeks to shed light on the prin­ci­ples that under­lie the orig­i­nal design of the church’s inte­ri­or from the 1960s, by archi­tect Eugénio Alves de Souza. We also con­sid­ered the insti­tu­tion­al con­straints that gov­ern the par­tic­u­lar­i­ties of a place of wor­ship, care­ful­ly artic­u­lat­ing them with the mon­u­men­tal and reli­gious char­ac­ter of its architecture.

The build­ing interior’s bru­tal­ist char­ac­ter is ani­mat­ed by the col­or­ful light that floods in from the stained-glass win­dows. To enhance this qual­i­ty, we opt­ed for a silent, almost sur­gi­cal inter­ven­tion. A clear, smooth, and lev­el floor con­nects all the dif­fer­ent spaces of the church, allow­ing the pieces cen­tral to wor­ship and cel­e­bra­tion, such as the altar and the ambo, to rise in the space on mar­ble – the stone thus assumes itself as anoth­er sacred ele­ment in the new con­fig­u­ra­tion – and to enter dia­logue with the great organ and the exist­ing sculp­tur­al pieces.

A new spa­tial orga­ni­za­tion of the com­plex was pro­posed through a pro­gres­sive sequence of dif­fer­ent “moments of prepa­ra­tion”. By visu­al­ly open­ing the inte­ri­or, we allow the two pro­ces­sion­al paths to hap­pen in a more dynam­ic, intu­itive man­ner, bestow­ing a cin­e­mat­ic qual­i­ty to the space. Here, archi­tec­ture not only inten­si­fies but is also intrin­sic to the spir­i­tu­al expe­ri­ence. In the end, the heart of this project lies in our attempt to under­stand and con­cil­i­ate the spa­tial and spir­i­tu­al needs of an old and a new gen­er­a­tion of church­go­ers – to cre­ate tran­scen­den­tal architecture.

Explana­to­ry report of the project
Down­load report

Pho­to internal

Tech­ni­cal drawings

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