Here the confluence of the Tagus and the Zêzere announces the delta. Land and water mingled, a landscape based on indecision, a silty, unstable street where the vegetation haunted by the floods does not recover. In the territory of Ribatejo, Lusitanian horses and herds of toros inhabit the dilated bed of the river. Vague expanses, small white buildings with basic typologies. A compromise between land and water. To construct an agricultural building in Aldeia do Poço Redondo near Tomar, Pedro Machado Costa took up the typology of Espigueiros, a sort of traditional corn or grain granaries, volumes detached from the body of the farms that mark the environment in a brief stroke.
Without further pretending to be useful, these small parallelepipeds of stone perched on stilts are often the object of special treatment, of a sentimental gesture that elevates above the function, and which moves. This is the case with this contemporary agricultural building, the first work of the young architect who developed a bold production.
Shifting into the contemporary anonymity of the box, Machado Costa is freed from a literal cover of the Espigueiro and is no longer bringing the program into the picture. From tradition, they have recovered architectural elements such as openwork walls constructed of brick – rather than wood or stone – which are bathed in the interior in a half-light of lace. They thus gave the building the most apt expression, the closest response to the existential nature of this architecture for work – its modesty.
From which is one of the most beautiful projects in the world.

Dominique Machabert, in Techniques and Architecture

[com a.s * – atelier de santos]