This new library in a provincial Portuguese town makes resonant connections with history

This new library is the second major civic building in Ílhavo by the filial partnership of José and Nuno Mateus who founded ARX Portugal collective in the early 90s. Their first, an intelligent remodelling and expansion of the town’s maritime museum (AR July 2004) celebrated the particular, while also touching on more elemental themes. It also required pragmatism in dealing with somewhat undistinguished existing structure, which, in order to secure EC funding, had to be integrated within the new work. Coincidentally, the library project also involves an existing element, but one of rather greater historic merit; in this case the remains of the Manor Visconde de Almeida, an aristocratic mansion house dating from the seventeenth century.

The site lies on the edge of Ílhavo, in surroundings typical of incoherent, dislocated peripheries everywhere. Both the nature of the site and the presence of an original structure gave rise to a more nuanced strategy of restatement and consolidation, as opposed to simply introducing a gestural, object building.

When the Mateus brothers won a competition for the job in 2001, not much remained of the mansion house. Yet since it constituted a rare example of enduring heritage in a coastal town more noted for its industry than history, the preservation and integration of what had survived became the starting point for the project.

From the original house, only the main façade running along the south-west edge of the site and the small family chapel remained. Both were in ruins, but are now immaculately restored, forming anchoring points for ARX’s additions and interventions. Executed with a taste for the reductive that clearly owes a debt to Siza, the new parts lock into the old, their white rendered volumes an abstract, contemporary play on Iberian vernacular. The main entrance on the north-east side is marked by a triangular canopy which shelters a shimmering wall of full-height glazing, a rare interlude of lightness and permeability in a predominantly hermetic composition.

The library forms the social and organisational fulcrum of the plan, docking into the historic parts, now functioning as offices and technical spaces. The main reading room is suspended over the entrance foyer and capped by a modern version of a sawtooth roof. On the south side, the foyer and reading room enclose a secret courtyard garden, a modern version of the cooling, verdant Iberian patio.

A rigorous palette of white walls and creamy stone floors unifies the interior, with the old calculated touch such as the designer light fitting that hovers precipitously over the entrance hall like a clutch of suspended pick-up-sticks. Though stripped of its decorative elements over time. The little chapel has been tactfully restored to its original function, adding another dimension to the civic nature of the complex; however in a conspicuously Catholic country, its presence does not seem out of place.

Throughout the project there is a fertile reciprocity between old and new with the new parts unequivocally of their time and characterised by a formal boldness. Yet this is tempered by a subtle sensuality – the handling of materials, the play of light – and enlightened awareness of place, history and how good architecture can resonate with and reinvigorate the wider community.