Castelo Novo Castle

Text description provided by architect.

The project’s brief requested the conservation and valorization of Castelo Novo’s Castle and surroundings. Moreover, it suggested also the creation of a space where people and visitors could enjoy it as a place of permanence.

To answer these demands, the design solution created a “body” without a rigid boundary, organic, working independently of the existing structures but using them as a support.

The object changes with the characteristics of the site. While in the church’s square it acts as a volume defining the limits, in the interior of the Castle’s walls, its shape is transformed into a pavement layer with ramps and stairs creating a pedestrian pathway which is suspended from the ground by metallic structure.

The pathway finishes in the castle’s Main Tower where a “steel box” was inserted in its interior containing a multimedia room.

All the construction was made using lightweight metal structures which can allow a clear distinction of the new object from the existing structures and, at the same time, the reversibility of the operation.