Enlargement of Ancestral Church of Fraião, Braga, Portugal

Architect: Nuno Ferreira Capa
Text: Tamás Szentirmai
Photos: Attilio Fiumarella

The project’s decision for the Ancestral Church of Fraião traces a path between the subtraction and the aggregation of distinctive elements, whose formal symbiosis results in the significance, scale and work of materials in the building time. The coatings and extensions made with painted cement mortars, both inside and outside the main church, reinforced the decision to uncover its original characteristics by removing the degraded coatings. The design plan presents a simple spatial organization, composed by two rectangles of slightly different dimensions – nave and main church – with an archway passage, this one revealed with the removal of mortar layers. This single organization also reveals itself in its volumetry where the nave overlays on the main church, although disclosing a slight increase in brick work. The bell tower, on the left side of the axial entrance of the nave, is a construction of cement-base structure and cladding from the beginning of the 20th century, where no pre-existence sign of the building has been revealed. The layers of plaster and cement of the façade accumulated throughout the years were subtracted, bringing the stone back to the surface as a solemn act of the “beginning” of the works. At the same time, this return to the basis, and which restored the original expression, led to a more contemporary intervention on those elements that could not be changed.

Architecture: Nuno Ferreira Capa_Arquitectura e Design
Leading architect: Nuno Capa