In its five hundred and eighty years, the jaded floor of the Convent of
São Domingos also served as an hospital, a military base, an hostel, a movie
theater... reaching us significantly lived in. Its new guest is the Music
Conservatory. The lengthened circulations configure, in its obvious geometry, an
abstract, protracted, monastic, serene space... radically disrupted by "voids"
of uncertain motive... laid bare by the external history. Action and
contemplation cohabit. There is isolation and expansion. There is melancholy and shadows. Light
governs the spaces. A physic light.