The site of the new Municipal Library of Baião faces to the south with Av. April 25 and offers views of the landscape to the north.
The pre-existing building, stripped of its original function, was a primary school of utter importance for the city. Having been built around 1940 during the Estado Novo period, it was the intention of the municipality to preserve the memory of this school where so many generations have studied.
The intervention proposal was to rehabilitate and integrate the existing building and adding to it a new volume with three floors. This solution allowed to have wide glass windows facing North, taking advantage of the natural light, allowing ideal reading conditions.
The main entrance of the library, which gives access to the lobby, is made through the old primary school, as a way of honoring the past generations, bringing them to the present and projecting it into the future. The new generations would follow their footsteps and would also come here to acquire knowledge.
A second entrance, through a covered side ramp, allows access to people with reduced mobility which creates a second atrium that functions as a small exhibition hall and, simultaneously, serves as a support space for the events to be held in the auditorium and in the training room.
This alternative entrance adds versatility to the building, allowing it to have other uses when the library is closed, promoting and enabling the most diverse uses including cultural events.
The vertical access allows passage to the upper floor, to the adults’ section, where people can watch the horizon and the silhouette of the mountains, as described in the book "The City and the Mountains" of Eça de Queiroz, written precisely about this untamed landscape. In the lower floor, we can find a warehouse, the internal service spaces and the children's section, that opens to the garden, which articulates with the inside to enable educational activities.
The project tried to merge the two bodies in order to form a single entity, through formal and functional commitment and through the use of the same materials in the two volumes. Thus, the two bodies, although distant in time, seek the possible dialogue through volumetry, but also through materiality.
Like the people who inhabit this region, who are extremely welcoming and transparent, the building is like them, with large windows and lots of light.
