Monument to everyday life
Between the neighbourhoods of Andorinhas and Misericórdia, in the city of Braga, this small pavilion is set within the São Vicente urban allotment. It was designed and built as part of the city’s celebrations as the Portuguese Capital of Culture in 2025, for which we were invited to participate in the Forma da Vizinhança Art and Architecture Festival. The allotment itself is a space for collective cultivation which, like so many other peripheral community gardens, carries a long cultural and social legacy. Inspired by the constructions of French workers’ gardens — where newly arrived labourers in the city found not only a means of subsistence, but also a place for rest, gathering, and culture — we proposed building a structure capable of offering shade, support, and shared time both to the gardeners and to the community who inhabit this place alongside them. A monument to the everyday life of those who work to produce the city: their own, and that of others.
Situated at the threshold between the allotment and the pedestrian path of the Andorinhas neighbourhood, the monument takes the form of a square wooden structure measuring 4 by 4 metres, distinguished by a triangular section that economises on materials and construction efforts. The side facing the neighbourhood features wooden slats painted alternately in pink and blue, from which a circle with a diameter of 1.40 metres was cut out. This circle rotates on its axis, transforming into either a table or a window, activating the relationship between inside and outside — between the allotment and the neighbourhood. On the outside, a bench welcomes passers-by; on the inside, a shelter offers protection for the gardeners, creating a space for rest, gathering, and sharing. Between the two, the circular table becomes a symbolic and practical point of contact — where surplus produce can be shared, conversations held, or card games to be played. A space of transition between work and celebration, between production and sharing — where architecture, more than mere shelter, stands as a declarative gesture of ongoing care within the neighbourhood. Supposedly ephemeral, the purpose of this architectural artifact lays in the sense of permanence made possible by turning it into a functional ornament, which convinced the municipality to keep it. As Tafuri suggested in reference to Rossi’s Teatro del Mondo, even the ephemeral may become eternal.
