Location: Abrantes, Portugal.

Architect: spaceworkers® .

A new exhibition in a historic Portuguese church explores the intersection between minimalist architecture and an existing structure that is over 800 years old. The exhibition aims to create an immersive and transparent experience for visitors, allowing them to cross layers of information between the present and the past. The exhibition is designed to be a kind of “analog” augmented reality, where the existing architecture and the new exhibition complement each other. The exhibition is constructed on a pine wood platform, which is placed on an existing clay floor. The walls are peeled off to give the impression of a floor that floats in space, allowing visitors to perceive the existing floor, which tells a different story. The exhibition structures are simple, ephemeral, transparent, and communicate with subtlety, alluding to the sacred and a simplicity of constructive logic. The wooden floor supports the metal structures of various dimensions, with glass that varies between 5m, 3m, and 2m in height. The various pieces are distributed throughout the museum space, according to a layout that follows the geometry of the building and takes advantage of verticality. The intervention is designed to be completely reversible and minimalist to avoid competing with the historical grandeur of the existing structure.

Photo credit: Fernando Guerra – FG+SG.