Drawing a chair to the renewed church of San Sebastian is to think about a collective place that is given back to the inhabitants of Almada, merging the historical memory and daily life of the recent city, which crystallized around it. Inside, under the wooden ceiling’s curvature, the chairs are lined up fullfiling the hall, where we only care for sitting for a while. We begun with the typical Portuguese chair, which can be found in many local handicraft shops around the country. By intervening in a pre-existing model, we accepted working its (ours) memory and at the same time, questionning and rethinking it in order to redesign the closed, solid and familiar features present on that shape.
The chair is in solid chestnut wood, with waxed finishing and rattan seat, clustered in groups of three units, anchored in a wooden platform. For praying, a wooden cover lined skin on the inside is pulled up – a box of surprises that improvises the hassock and closes again. The confessionary is a perpendicular plane to the side paneling of cooper, which can be moved. It is a chestnut wooden structure framing a copper mesh – a golden and inaccurate contact surface between the seated listening figure harboring the speaker kneeling.