Tapete Interpretive Centre | CVDB ARQUITECTOS

The CITA [Centro Interpretativo do Tapete de Arraiolos – Arraiolos Tapestry Museum] is located at Arraiolos main public space, the Praça Lima e Brito, where the town hall is sited.
The project for the museum consists in a contemporary intervention that defines a selective strategy to deal with the existing elements. It proposes a clear spatial organization to respond to the programmatic and technological requirements, thus bringing to the building a coherent and continuous exhibition narrative that is focused on all the cycles of production of this particular tapestry.
The programme is organised through a central spiral that begins at the entrance, then follows to the main hall, the nucleus of the new museum, a space with double headroom, that links all the spaces of the CITA, and then to the different public spaces, the multipurpose room, the educational spaces, and to the temporary and permanent exhibitions spaces.
The project establishes a more contained intervention for the ground floor, maintaining most of the key architectural existing elements such as the dome ceilings. The exhibition spaces on the first floor present contemporary ceilings that work as inverted cones that culminated on skylights to bring into these spaces a well controlled natural light.
The new museum will bring a new light to this building and a sense of both tradition and modernity to Arraiolos social and cultural life.