The Casa das Histórias Paula Rego was designed by the architect Eduardo Souto de Moura. The building uses certain aspects of the region’s historical architecture, which is here reinterpreted in a contemporary way. It can be immediately recognized thanks to its two pyramid-shaped towers and the red-colored concrete used in its construction.
- Architects: Eduardo Souto de Moura
- Location: Av. da República 300, 2765 Cascais, Portugal
- Project Team: Sérgio Koch, Ricardo Prata, Bernardo Monteiro, Diogo Guimarães, Junko Imamura, Kirstin Schätzel, Manuel Vasconcelos, Maria Luís Barros, Pedro G. Oliveira, Rita Alves, Sofia Torres Pereira, Susana Monteiro
- Structural And Mechanical Engineers: AFA consult
- Project Year: 2008
Casa das Histórias description
The land and trees which previously existed at the site are incorporated as fundamental elements, while four wings, of varying heights and sizes, make up the building. The building itself is subdivided into rooms that lead into one another and are laid out around the higher central room which houses the temporary exhibition. The building’s interior has 750m2 of exhibition space, on top of the technical and service areas, and is decorated in neutral shades and paved with the blue-grey marble of Cascais. The building also houses a shop, a café which opens onto a verdant garden and an auditorium with 200 seats.
The building’s design is fully in keeping with the artist’s wishes, and it was Paul Rego herself who was responsible for the choice of architect. It meets all the requirements for a museum and its various functions, without forgetting the need to give visitors a warm welcome.
With the Casa das Histórias, it can be said that Eduardo Souto de Moura has adopted and almost ‘regionalist’ approach, distancing himself from the modern abstractionism that has been a dominant feature of his work. It is, however, an uncritical regionalism, that avoids the sense of ‘resistante’ which lay behind other attempts at the approach in Portugal in the 1980s.
In this museum created for Cascais, Souto de Moura associates certain formal devices with a legacy of architectural composition, adopting specific formulas for the building’s insertion in the surrounding area as well as a use of scale which can be easily contextualised in a very specific type of geography. Its close proximity to the work of Raul Lino is therefore set in a “Southern” landscape, without resorting to any unnecessary decorative or picturesque frills.
– O Arquitectar das Casas Simples, Ana Vaz Milheiro, in Casa das Histórias Paula Rego
About Eduardo Sota de Moura
Eduardo Elísio Machado Souto de Moura was born on 25 July 1952 in Portugal. Along with Fernando Távora and Álvaro Siza, he is one of the alumni of the Porto School of Architecture, where he was appointed Professor. Souto de Moura was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2011 and the Wolf Prize in Arts in 2013.
