Eduardo Souto de Moura - Portugal
Conversion Municipal Market Braga
Bairro do Carandá
1999 - 2010


The Municipal Market Braga in the Carandá district was one of the first commissions in the carreer of Eduardo Souto de Moura. Designed and realized
in the years 1980-1984, this building was converted into a dance and music school by the same architect twenty years later. Idea of the original design
was to build a covered street, conceived as a city fragment capable of proposing an urban grid. This grid happened excessively, and the market suffocated
between schools, nightclubs and rampant speculation. When the market was closed, it became somekind of a natural ruin. Eduardo Souto de Moura
was asked by the mayor of Braga, what he wanted to do with it, since he had the intention to destroy it. The architect asked him to "leave me some of the ruin,
because I want to make two schools there". As a consequence, Eduardo Souto de Moura designed the demolition of his first architectural work.
The conversion of the Municipal Market meant to remove the roof, while the pillars where kept and a garden created, resulting in the appearance of a ruin.