Church of São José da Boavista

An informally constituted agora, its walls and walkways heavily used and occupied by groups and gatherings that converge here. This pattern reveals the site's natural role as a gathering place and confirms the rightness of creating a plaza at the lower level.
The decision to fit most of the Social and Parish Center's volume between two levels, through a single form adapted to each condition, establishes a public plaza at street level while organizing the space above, enabling the transition between levels and integrating the program.
Raised above the plaza, the church's forecourt — a place of arrival and gathering — is shaped by the cut created by the access routes between levels and by the volume of the Social and Parish Center. This ensemble functions as an intermediate landing that reserves a protected, singularly devoted space for the church.
The church volume occupies a central point of the new plaza, dividing it into unequal but harmoniously proportioned parts, seeking the original sense of the word "symmetry" — the balanced relationship between the parts of a whole. Its elevated position, between sky and earth, reinforces the symbolism of ascension. In this way, a new urban space is created — a covered plaza — that serves as a place of welcome and permanence, sheltered from sun and rain.
The raised volume stands out not only through its position but also through its materiality, which announces its exceptional character. In contrast to the reinforced-concrete wall-building, the church presents itself as a singular form, immaculate white and strongly contrasting, celebrating the light that casts the protective shadow over the forecourt below.
Inside, the whiteness sought on the exterior is reinforced, while exposed wood remains visible in the assembly's pews. The exception lies in the liturgical elements: the altar, now in a central position, executed in Estremoz marble, and the tabernacle and crucifix, made in brass.
Entry is through a vestibule, which gives access to two antechambers from which the nave is reached. The design of these spaces proposes a clear separation between exterior and interior, between the profane and the sacred.
The antechambers, smaller in scale, expand through their tall ceiling height, contrasting with the entrances into the main nave, where the lowered ceiling creates a greater sense of intimacy. This peripheral compression intensifies the grandeur of the nave's central space, which opens up to a ceiling height of nearly ten meters, marked by the zenithal opening of natural light above the altar.
The dynamism of the interior space, bounded by a quadrangular perimeter, results from the tension between the orientation of the altar, the ambo, and the tabernacle, and the circular arrangement of the presidency and the assembly, in contrast with the design of the ceilings. This dynamic is reinforced by the diagonal entry relative to the volume's axis.
From the main nave, one also reaches the sacristy, the confessional, and the building's technical areas.
The aim, throughout, is a distilled volume — a form whose rarity comes more from the geometry it inscribes itself within, its appropriate scale, and the just proportion of its parts.
The mortuary chapels are located at plaza level and have two separate accesses: one for mourners, and one reserved for the entry and exit of coffins.
The parish center, accessible from the center of the plaza, extends in continuity with the existing building, forming the wall-building with three programs — mortuary chapels and community center on the ground floor, and parish center on the first floor.