VIGÉSIMO SEGUNDO LIVRO

METAMORPHOSED PLACES


Metamorphosed places are those works in which the original idea of the building is no longer identifiable.


The building consisting of a Bank Agency, an apartment and two shops at Moçamedes, in southern Angola, had to be built behind a long ruined adobe wall to comply with the rulings of the Monuments Commission. Inside there was almost nothing to restore so in the interior I invented a series of spaces interconnected through huge and very thick semi-circular arches.


My own House in Melville, I turned back to front and enlarged, although it retains the possibility of becoming semis again by closing the two openings on the party wall.


 

In the Cricket Pavilion which I turned into a Chapel at Wits I reinforced many of the original features of the building, but the spaces are so interconnected and so related to the symmetry and axiality of the building that the haphazard interior sub-division of the pavilion is totally eliminated. On the other hand many of the alterations are so integrated into the original work that they are not identifiable as new work.


House at Eugaria, Portugal, is being created from a simple traditional farmhouse on a very steep hillside. Around the house are a series of interlinked terraces with stepped and curving retaining walls and steps. Windows push out of the envelope and bulging iron grilles punctuate the stone plinth.


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