(Overview)
A careful, three-year restoration that turned a closed and crumbling cloister into a home for artist residencies, exhibitions and quiet study — without erasing four centuries of history.
Client
Fundação Mar
Location
Évora, Portugal
Year
2022
Duration
3 years
Budget
€3.4M
Services
Restoration · Interiors · Lighting
02
Our approach
We catalogued 1,240 stones before intervening, repaired rather than replaced wherever possible and routed all new services through the original drainage channels beneath the floors.
03
The outcome
The building reopened in 2022 with twelve artist studios, two exhibition rooms and a public garden. The restoration received a heritage award and is used almost every day of the year.
Before
After
Measured survey of the north gallery
Studies for the new steel stair
Lime mortar samples, matched to the original
Lighting study model
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(05) — Results
1,240
Stones catalogued
12
Artist studios
860 m²
Restored floor area
365
Days a year in use
(06) — The full story
Casa do Claustro
Reopening a sixteenth-century cloister to the city
Reading the building
Before any design, we spent six months surveying. Every stone, beam and tile was photographed, measured and numbered, so that each later decision could be traced back to what was really there.
Contemporary, but quiet
New elements — a weathering-steel stair, oak floors in the former cells, discreet lighting — are clearly of our time, but they step back so the old building speaks first.
Invisible services
Heating, lighting and data run through the original drainage channels beneath the galleries. Not a single new duct cuts through the historic vaults.
They treated a four-hundred-year-old building with real humility. The restoration feels invisible — which is exactly what we hoped for.
Ingrid Holm, Chair, Fundação Mar
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