What is a cistern?

	Note of the architect

The New Bor Architecture-Odelia Portugali. End of construction- 2001 To convert a cistern into a place. A place where one can be or do. A space that once contained water will now become a place for people; the cistern stays, the essence changes. In between the limits of the old walls, within the limits of imagination the architecture of the new cistern is being formed. An architecture whose main ambition is to create a sense of orientation in a space located under the ground: Light. The window; skylight bathes the cistern with natural light, pointing to the old opening. A niche in the wall gathers the exterior, sliding it way down to the bottom level; the depth of the cistern is explored. Lines of the new openings holdover lines of existing stone walls. style='mso-spacerun:yes'>  Straight corners confronting curved corners. Floating floors are defining a center, following the original edges of the cistern and the existing edges of the courtyard. The new and the old constructions only touch. The human experience; one gathers adventures and retraces them over at other times. Thoughts cross the walls of the cistern, the walls of the courtyard, the street, the city; a context is being built, a picture discovered.