'MUNHO da VESSADA'

The architectural nature resides in the act of building. It is through this process that, liberating itself from the universe of ideas and representations, architecture comes to be in this world. Till then it's not architecture, it's something else or something else about architecture, although, this understanding, does not deny all the precious architectonic culture that comes from books, pictures, visits, almost everything and everywhere.

It's with this personal understanding that is presented the work ‘Munho da Vessada’, an old water mill resting on the right bank of Olo river in Mondim de Basto, that spent the last 40 years in ruin, coming to these days almost disappeared both from place and memory. It's intended to restore the original function, the milling, combined with a small shelter for sporadic refuge.

All the work here exposed, from the insipient amateur archaeology to the construction, was carried by one person that gathers the functions of the architect, the client and the builder. The pictures under create a timeline complemented with a date, setting a diary of the works, a process that is also disappearing.

This project is an experiment that allows to interpret the act of building as a method to think and conceive architecture. In doing so the construction moves forward without a final closed plan, as it is common, but only with several freehand sketches as guidelines. Because of this, ideas are able to change, as they changed from the beginning until this moment. Even now, and because the work isn’t finished, there are a lot of uncertainties respecting how it will really end. The forms, the materials, every decision come down to be made in the course of the work, not responding to a fashionable type of design but to a building of its own place, story and matter.

Inevitably, the mistake is part of the procedure, really beginning as a mistake, but being assimilated in time as a registration of the process, the doubts, in the final structure. This errors make indeed part of this learning process here explored and the building is like a book where all this is written for remembering.

This experience search a kind of architecture that is deeply connected with tectonics, born from materials and their relation, creating an inhabitable body that is rooted in place. In fact, the site is an important raw material that is incorporated into the building. As an example, the use of big pebbles that accuse the dramatic relation between the mill and the river.

This work aims to different approach to making architecture that, for myself, is able to create the most sensitive and timeless buildings in which all Man should aspire to dwell.