.

Architectural criticism is more commonly written by historians, academics of methodologies, professors who investigate creative processes. Just a few architects in the practice of the project propose to clarify the meanings of a work as an experience open to a creative process. What is proposed is to bring criticism closer to the knowledge, action and experience of project architects who investigate, reflect and inhabit the work while they are designing it. The article relates architectural discourse and intervention in the work of the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo (1993-1998), a project by Paulo Mendes da Rocha (1928-2021), recognizing that, for the architect, the basis of the transformation of architecture lies in recognizing and renewing the historic building (1896/1900). Whether in the dialogue established between memory and tradition, contemporary time and its circumstances, or in the relationship of interdependence, necessary and transitive, between building and urban organism.