The Library is a small building located at a residual end of the University Campus. It rises from a small block, on which an aerial volume is juxtaposed, which will rest on the outer edge of the enclosure, re-composing the public street to the university campus.
The building is axially crossed by a ramp, inscribing an internal fracture that organize it, from which a synopsis of the space itself is memorized: a cavernous place, with overhead and side lights, intercepted by maximized structural elements, beams or pillars in its plastic potential. The overlapping of historically antagonistic compositional themes – pillars plus walls, for example – is cumulative; allows one to submerge in a world that refers to an experimental hypothesis, a process built on suggestive hesitation.
Pedro Machado Costa works on a structural complexity, in a less emphatic condition in Portuguese tradition, which is reflected in the materiality of the building, in the way the volumes are built in the defiance of gravity: almost an expressionist imbalance. With the exception of the building scale, which is used contextually, any material elements connoted with a localized impression are removed.
The Library draws on different stories, in a break with its roots in the anti-classicism of the Russian constructivists. Thus, projects like this one make it possible to foresee, for Portuguese architecture, paths traced in less smooth molds.

Ana Vaz Milheiros: Português menos Suave, in Público

[1st Prize in public competition; with a.s*- atelier de santos]