Barn refurbishment, Álmadena | Lagos | 2016
It is usual in rural communities who dwell on farming to remove rocks out of the soil to make it arable. These removed rock remains become construction material – rough stone – available to be stacked on land fencing and on farm buildings load bearing walls. These constructions became part of a material culture and tradition, revealing the way man inhabited a territory, lived from its resources and, eventually, transformed respectfully its landscape. These constructions are still, with no doubt, architecture. And perhaps the wiser one.
This barn, in this small village in West Southern Algarve, between Lagos and Sagres, has its bearing walls built with a meticulously stacked rough limestone, plucked from the very soil where this building stands. Traditionally, these barns have their walls only outside protected with a lime plaster. In the inside, the methodic stone stack assemblage remains exposed, without any kind of (unnecessary) protection. The roof structure is usually done with Castanho wood truss work, and the roof itself with clay roofing tyles.
When these buildings become unused, and eventually abandoned, the sun begins to enter through the broken or wind displaced rooftiles. With the sun entering also comes the wind and the rain. With time, the roof wood structure rots, all the roof fails and fall. The stacked stone walls, now fully exposed to climate, are the next to decay. With a strange dignity, the building raised from earth with stone, wood, lime and clay, returns slowly to earth.
In this region this kind of ruins are found spread in the landscape, beautifully making part of it.
As many others of his kind, this barn had already reached the point when the sunlight and the rain cross the roof. And the time came to take care of it. Unfortunately, it is very hard to find today someone curious and interested about the culture, the tradition knowledge, and the craftsmanship needed to respect these buildings... even though we should always want to give them a new life and a new time, not being too nostalgic...
This barn is now physically preserved, but waiting for a mind reset to give him a new and genuine existence, where past, tradition and future can fit.
arch: Nuno Arenga