Torre do Relógio in Amareleja

Facility | Rehabilitation

Amareleja, Moura, Portugal

Complete

Popularly known as Torre do Relógio (Clock tower), this construction stands out on the plains of the Alentejo, in the town of Amareleja. Having been constructed in phases and different time periods, as an offering from the population to the community, its covering was never completed. Over the years, its walls and arches, watched over by the tower, had many functions, including the burial ground in the context of an outbreak of the plague, which fell upon those Alentejo lands in the 19th century. Even though there was little excavation, during construction work, thirteen burials that took place during that time period were identified.

In 2015, the municipality of Moura agreed to advocate for the conclusion and finalisation, and thus covering the symbolic building of this town, while maintaining the possibility of opening it and creating, in its interior, a multi-purpose space that could accommodate programs of religious, cultural or events of the most diverse nature which had occurred until then.

The recorded history of these popular impulses remains on the exterior walls of the building and in the diverse construction methods and the pairing of stone and ceramics. In its interior, conducted by many and less qualified recent interventions, it was chosen to conduct some cleaning, repairs and the uniformization of colour using a white paint finish, leaving merely the texture and the irregularities in its own pairing, and on its exterior, assuming all of the necessary arrangments for a proper functioning building.

On the covering, it was chosen not to replicate the various construction methods experimented with within different time periods by introducing a new materiality, corten steel. The corten steel, with a controlled oxidation process, allowed us to add a new texture of fast absorption from the traces of time, representing a moment of horizontal continuity in passing.

Even though the tower had a stone envelope, and our initial proposal, approved unanimously by the municipality, was to paint it white, this motivated a large popular objection during the construction works. In the sequence of this, we initiated a participatory process (which is described here), and we reached an agreement that even though we would not replicate the existing colours of the tower from the 20th century, it would be completed with a colour scheme comprised of Alentejo Yellow and the Malaga Red, which we see used through