“I dare to think of a building… a great block of a building, which is cut into from top to bottom in varied places of varies shapes neither forgetting the castle, nor the order of the temple, giving light to spaces and passages on the immediate interior and leading to a glorious central and single space, the walls and their light left in faceted planes, the shapes of the record of their making, intermingled with the serenity of light from above.” Louis I. Kahn [McCarter Robert, Louis I. Kahn, Phaidon, New York, 2005 – pag. 302]

Then suddenly the Portuguese castle came into my mind as a place where to stay protected from the enemy [which can be human or not, like the wind]; a unique place for knowledge [a garden that hosts pieces of art]. For this reason “the glorious central and single space” becomes a magic place, a beautiful secret garden, where palms and sculptures stand together expressing their beauty. Those protected-by-wind palms become a unique scenario that has to be discovered through different shades of intimacy within the exterior wall. A boundary which is not only a limit and something that divides what is inside from what is outside but a physical occasion, where the functional program can be expressed.

“The shapes of the record of their making” [What remains of the ancient fort] are fixed in a volume which follows the existing rules of materiality, shape and geometry [plan geometry]. The new appears as a natural consequence of the old, extending the concept of protection [for the inner space]. Then the “order” turns to giant proportions to bear the heaviness of a desert landscape.