The project takes up a portion of land adjacent to the Municipal Gallery building, in the heart of the center of Montijo, in the Portuguese district of Setúbal. A kind of hortus conclusus featuring two outdoor ‘rooms’ varying in altitude, the 80-square-meter garden – a contained, relaxing space – was an offshoot of inserting a lift into the 19th-century edifice to solve its accessibility problem.

The relationship established between the garden and the city is one of mutual curiosity, allowing glimpses of one another only through a metal railing at the apex of the Gallery. Plastered with a mortar of slightly sandy cement, the walls give cohesion to the complex.