NMS | Nuno Melo Sousa Architecture . renders: © OKdraw
From an elevated point of view, the sky and the landscape reflect on a water mirror – a porous concrete palette that fills with the winter rain and dries in the arid summer. The mortuary house is carved in stone, hiding in a shell, standing by. As the water is falling and flowing, it soaks the pores and imperfections of this material falling through the circular hole over the rugged topography.
This horizontal abstraction finds a delicate balance with a vertical element, deploying on the ground and apparently floating as tensions with the slope. Water, and its changing states, is a transversal religious element, often related to purification and transformation a covering of the building in a reflection of the sky, infinity, the expectation of ascension. Facing the four quadrants – north, south, east and west – the square has an absent orientation thus free and unwilling, embracing all creeds in a space for reflection and communion.
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Capela Mortuária, 2019
Barrancos, Portugal
team / equipa:
Nuno M. Sousa
João Taveira
Hugo Martins Cruz – Estruturas
Duarte Natário – Arquitectura Paisagista
image / imagem: OKdraw
