Casa das Historias Paula Rego / Paula Rego – House of Stories

The first assignment in this semester is an analysis (As usual) about a given museum.  I always like to stress the meaning of the word ‘assignment’ over some of my projects, it is becoming more and more clear that after 2.5 years of architectural training and self learning. I know what stuff I want to learn. Negotiating between my own interest and my need to fulfill my college training, I’m walking on the cliff edge. There are assignments that I would choose not to do because they don’t mean a thing to me. There are also research that I push to do myself, where the school doesn’t care.

Last semester, I almost fail one of my lecture course on Asian Architectural history, which I find particular boring and useless to me. And especially when I fail to slow down my impatience to the pace of speech of my lecturer, I decided I’ll only do what is need to get pass. Time saved, hopefully giving myself some more freedom to my own pursue.

The seventy students in all six studios are assigned a unique museum, of which we have to produce a architectural analysis within 1.5 week. Nothing very exciting for the museum that I have been assigned. I first have a lot of difficulty finding resources from the internet and books, both because the museum is only recently completed. Archdaily and other common sources did not have records. Luckily, I found out that El Croquis  N.171 has the building on the front cover. More luckily, the digital edition of the magazine has a free chapter for download, that is exactly my project. There I got a pretty comprehensive pile of drawings and images.

I also attempted to contact the architect Eduardo Souto de Moura, I haven’t head reply until the project ends. (he replyed on the day after my review, together with a load of drawings. Which are very detailed and fascinating drawing of the whole project. Thanks Eduardo)

This is a assignment that I would love to avoid if possible, however that is not the case. So instead of complete giving up,  I did a bunch of analytical diagrams. Which I aim to show others what the museum is about, that is the aesthetics in the detailing of the minimalistic design.

This is what the museum look in real. The red color is selected by the artist  Paula Rego herself.  Which help contrast with the surrounding green.

A critic says my floor tiling pattern is unrelated, which I don’t really agree. First: I don’t have much else to do.  Second, I found that such detail is valid that the tiling pattern strives to be continuous and even across rooms, which brings the transition between spaces smooth and non-awkward.