Museum of terracotta Souto de Moura in Portugal

Eduardo Souto de Moura, the pupil of Alvaro Siza, is one of those architects whose work speaks for itself. His work has evolved from an admiration for Mies van der Rohe architectural practice that shares the interpretation of local needs with the search for precision as a constant in both houses as works in large scale projects. And the art center Casa das Stories is a good example of this philosophy.
Located inside of Cascais, a coastal city 30 kilometers west of Lisbon, the Casa das Stories is an art gallery that brings together for the first time in Portugal a collection of the painter and illustrator lusa Paula Rego, who is involved in its box controversial social realities, such as abortion. The international status of Paula Rego has led him to perform, among others, the official portrait of the Portuguese President Jorge Sampaio.
But the building does not look Souto de Moura interact with the work that contains, but is presented as a revision of traditional housing that incorporates lusa to modern structures, such as the glass of the entrances, in contrast to the finality of external forms. And here we find two references clearly that accompany the evolution of his work, Alvaro Siza and the so-called New Style Portuguese.
The Casa das Stories is configured as a terracotta colored uniform construction, with a central pavilion of the two bodies growing pyramid inspired by the work of another Portuguese architect Raul Lino, driver of what was called Style Português Suave, an aesthetic movement recovered architectural forms used by Portuguese public and private buildings during the 1940s and 1950s, and some authors classify as a national style or Traditional style.
This movement sought to create a genuinely Portuguese architecture using modern engineering features decorated with a mixture of aesthetic elements gathered outside of the Portuguese architecture of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries of traditional houses from various regions of Portugal.
In fact, compared to the heaviness of the large volumes of dull blank walls outside, Souto De Moura interior recreates a light and contemporary minimalist spaces which shows respect for the original tones of each material – clay, stone, wood, etc .-, perhaps inspired by his mentor Alvaro Siza.

Thus, the interior represents an aesthetic contrast to the external front, although it continues the global geometry of the building. An area in which the brightness enhancing premium aseptic white walls, both to enhance the work hanging like to expand the volume of the chambers and the feeling of space.
In essence, the internal commitment to human scale and the minimal presence of objects, yes, always based on natural elements, as seen in the cafeteria furniture, enhancing its presence on the white canvas walls, while the bark proposed building a structure that integrates with surreal landscape.