Location
Évora, Portugal
Year
2025
Area
2,400 m²
Status
In construction
Client
Alentejo Library Foundation
Category
Cultural
Coordinates
38°34′N 7°54′W
Drawing scale
1:200
N°02 — The project
In this climate, shade is the first room you design.
A wall that shades
Summer temperatures around Évora regularly pass forty degrees. The library is built around that fact. Its walls are thick lime-rendered masonry, whitewashed every spring, and every opening sits deep within them, so the sun rarely reaches the glass.
At the centre of the plan, a cloister of arched openings keeps the air still and cool. The reading rooms open onto it, with long oak tables, shelving to the ceiling and high arched windows that bring in light without heat; a colonnade along the south side looks out over the olive groves.
Building slowly
Construction began in 2024 and is being phased so the old municipal library can stay open in town until the day the books move across. The walls are built by a local team with lime mortar and stone from a quarry ten kilometres away, and the white will deepen with every new coat.
N°03 — Plates
Photographs · Selected
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N°06
