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Of course, interwoven with the passage of time, are
the realities of day-to-day life. And, Manuel explains,
architecture revolves around life:
“And one of the things that you also learn is that you
don’t design. You deal with life. That’s architecture.
Design is a very small word [for] what you do when you
are trying to propose a support for life. Because a house
is a support for life. So we are interested in the way we
are going to live, or the feelings that we are going to
provide, or the way we are going to move around the house,
things that are connected to life; our friends are going
to come, kids. I mean, this is always talking about really
real things about life and then start from that we give a
forum; we design in that sense. But we don’t think of this
idea of design, because the word design, in our moment
today, is very connected to image. And we don’t accept the
image as a starting point.”
São Mamede House, renovated with elements of the Roman
ruins that stood in its ground, reflects the passage of
time as well as daily life. The ruins bind these concepts
together:
“One of the things that we like very much is this idea of
the ruins. Of course, 20 years ago, it was this romantic
approach [to] the ruin, but probably the most important is
that the ruin is always an open possibility. And I feel
that good architecture is exactly the same as a ruin; we
have the feeling that good architecture will become always
a good ruin. And when you visit the ruins... in Greece and
Rome and places like that... when we look at these ruins
we always think about possibilities. Our mission was to
design a house as a ruin. The people that are going to
live there are going to use the house [with a] freedom of
possibilities...also the feeling that they are going to
finish the process. Because architecture is an art but it
is an unfinished art. So if you think of a painting or a
sculpture, it is already finished. So it is what it is. In
architecture you need to add a layer of life to finish a
project. And...you always project yourself on a ruin in a
clear way. And our mission is to design in the way that we
feel that we could project ourselves on the house and we
have the feeling of being part of the project.”
