Centro De Artes Nadir Afonso / Louise Braverman

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Text description provided by the architects. Merging architecture and landscape, Centro de Artes Nadir Afonso links an emerging urban center with its pastoral environs. The1858-square-meter single artist museum fuses a light, lucid contemporaneity with the rich materiality and sustainability of Portuguese design to honor one of Portugal’s most beloved native sons, the artist Nadir Afonso. As well as paying homage to the artist, who formerly practiced architecture with Le Corbusier and Oscar Niemeyer, the Centro, along with the artist’s foundation in nearby Chaves, will serve as an engine driving economic, cultural, and community development in the region. Sliced into a steep hillside, the new art museum is divided into two distinct, but connected, parts:  a light-filled cultural center looking out upon the intersection of a national highway and City Hall; and, nestled in the back, a vast, below-grade exhibition space topped by a green-roof park.