Serra Archive
Cultural,
Évora,
2023
Scope
Interior architecture, display design, and the reading room
Surface
780 m², of which 460 is collection store
Team
Marta Ruiz, Nuno Belém
Photography
Bruno Vasques
Completion
July 2023
An archive is a climate before it is a room, and this one had to be both.
From brief
to handover
Serra holds 14,000 stone fragments from quarries and demolished buildings across the Alentejo, catalogued since 1974 and, until this project, seen by about six people a year. The trustees wanted a reading room and a public hall without moving the collection, which cannot leave a band of 45 to 55 per cent relative humidity.
The public rooms went on the south side and the collection on the north, with the plant room between them doing the arguing. Fragments sit on turned limestone pedestals at three heights, cut from the same quarry as most of what they carry. There is no artificial light in the hall before four in the afternoon, and in June that means walking in almost blind for a moment.
The hall before four, on daylight alone
The catalogue, kept since 1974
Fragments, waiting on the store floor
The open shelves, boxed by quarry
Materials
used
Limestone
Pedestals, turned at three heights
European oak
Reading room tables and the catalogue drawers
Lime plaster
The public hall, north wall and south
Cultural,
Évora
“Six people a year used to see these stones. Last month it was 900.”
Álvaro Bento, Trustee, Serra Archive