When the University of Porto invited Xavier Monteys, a Spanish professor of architectural design, to give a lecture in town, they told him to choose his own venue. The topic of Monteys’s class – a collection of Le Corbusier drawings of Mallorca, intended to be seen in the round – was perfectly suited to one particular site: the 16th-century Monastery of Serra do Pilar.

In the monastery’s circular cloister, the number of intercolumniations matches the number of Corbu sketches exactly. To exhibit these pieces, architects Marta Sequeira, Pedro Matos Gameiro and Carlos Machado e Moura devised Carnet C10, a web of white cable that hung from the stone walls of the monastery and supported an aluminum ring floating in the centre of the cloister. It was in this inner circle – surrounded by Le Corbusier’s striking images, in a classical building ingeniously made new – that Monteys delivered his talk. 

Project Carnet C10 Location Vila Nova de Gaia, Portugal Architects Marta Sequeira (University of Lisbon) and Pedro Matos Gameiro (Matos Gameiro Arquitectos) with Carlos Machado e Moura (MAVAA) Team Paulo Dias, João Varela and Fernando Rodrigues Photo Jorge Nogueira