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Sumit Singhal
Sumit Singhal loves modern architecture. He comes from a family of builders who have built more than 20 projects in the last ten years near Delhi in India. He has recently started writing about the architectural projects that catch his imagination. S.Paulo Library in Portugal, Lisbon by site specific – arquitectura, ldaDecember 21st, 2017 by Sumit Singhal
Article source: site specific – arquitectura, lda The project was developed in the context of a close relationship between the Religious Congregation and the studio, which had its beginning with the renewal of Paulistas bookstores and has been developed over time, with the aim of reactivating some community assets together with the need to modernize the image of its commercial department.  Image Courtesy © FG+SG – Fernando Guerra
 Image Courtesy © FG+SG – Fernando Guerra The Religious Congregation Pia Sociedade São Paulo is a community of around twenty Pauline siblings seeking to evangelize through several media, in particular through the publisher Paulus. The link with books has a central role in the community life whether through research, study or simply through everyday publications.  Image Courtesy © FG+SG – Fernando Guerra  Image Courtesy © FG+SG – Fernando Guerra The congregation´s home sits within Quinta Rainha dos Apóstolos, in Apelação, on the outskirts of Lisboa, in a rural plot, overlooking a broad valley open to the river Tagus. The existing complex includes a pair of long 4-storey blocks sitting on a ground-floor podium. Here we can find the residences of priests and brothers as well as the publisher´s installation and storage. The existing buildings date from 1970’s, are a typical construction from those days, with a straight structure of pillar/beam, without any ambition on design or use definition: both constructive solutions as architectural ones are quite trivial and mundane. There are other buildings scattered throughout the farm that the congregation expects to recover in the medium term.  Image Courtesy © FG+SG – Fernando Guerra  Image Courtesy © FG+SG – Fernando Guerra We were requested to design a library and the new chapel in two distinct phases; the first phase, the library, plays a key role in this community and its reading room should be seen not only as a working area, for studying and research, but as a space for the gathering of the community and as a representative space where main meetings and special events could take place; the second phase, the chapel, or a small church, built in a particular house for particular people, it should be the central area for a house of many homes; a space for prayer and for communication; a place of intimacy as well as assembly.  Image Courtesy © FG+SG – Fernando Guerra  Image Courtesy © FG+SG – Fernando Guerra The Library The library is located in the offices floor, in the working area. As designers we set the project on two major key points: the relationship of the community with their books (18,000 titles) and their importance in the life of the congregation, which led us to minimize the presence of a new infrastructure and to expose the books in order to involve users in their own books, as a private, almost personal, collection; the need to simplify the existing geometry, very ruling, subordinating it through a set of inverted boxes on the ceiling, which introduce a new scale and accuracy, trying as much as possible to unify the space making it uno and continuous.  Image Courtesy © FG+SG – Fernando Guerra  Image Courtesy © FG+SG – Fernando Guerra The library consists of a reading room and a deposit room that works as an archive, connected to the reading room but with restricted access. The walls are lined with wooden shelves to optimize the maximum storage capacity. The shelves are continuous over the entire area, except in front of windows, creating five levels set by the book dimension. In specific situations they extend out of the vertical alignments allowing other features .  Image Courtesy © FG+SG – Fernando Guerra  Image Courtesy © FG+SG – Fernando Guerra The only desk, in the same wood as the shelves, with seven meters long, extends throughout the room, with a capacity for sixteen people. It has a central lamp which ensures good lighting conditions at work but also allows users conversation face to face.  Image Courtesy © FG+SG – Fernando Guerra  Image Courtesy © FG+SG – Fernando Guerra There is also a central module of shelves that increases the storage capacity and prioritizes the research area and the working area on the central table. The diversity and room warmer sense are provided by the covers of the books that occupy the shelves and complement the geometric accuracy of the proposal and by the brass details. From the outset we believed a sense of austerity would invite to the needed silence and serenity, but still show warm and engaged either in working or more formal situations.  Image Courtesy © FG+SG – Fernando Guerra  Image Courtesy © FG+SG – Fernando Guerra  Image Courtesy © FG+SG – Fernando Guerra  Image Courtesy © FG+SG – Fernando Guerra  Image Courtesy © FG+SG – Fernando Guerra  Image Courtesy © FG+SG – Fernando Guerra  Image Courtesy © site specific – arquitectura, lda  Image Courtesy © site specific – arquitectura, lda  Image Courtesy © site specific – arquitectura, lda  Image Courtesy © site specific – arquitectura, lda  Image Courtesy © site specific – arquitectura, lda
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