2022 - town hall, santa maria da feira

Town Hall, Santa Maria da Feira

To better combine the conditions of the context and to adequately respond to the principles of the program, a public park with diverse features was established, seeking to adapt to the morphology, articulating each of its parts to the right position that each moment demands. With a tower as its central element – whose regular and permeable protective grid gives it a sober appearance – which rises to mark and take center stage in such a significant facility, the entire complex is established from a large welcoming square, located on the access avenue. The set develops between solid and gravitational reinforced concrete terraces that build the other volumes that make up the program, gently connecting the different levels and thus creating a wooded park, a place for the forest and the clearing, the path between them and the complex web of branches; a shrub garden with a covered viewpoint, on the intermediate level, and an orchard that spreads out over the street at the back. This articulated system is, during this process, organised according to the different valences, in a pedestrian continuum of multiple expressions, harmonised and accessible, capable of constituting itself as a cohesive and poetic whole, in correspondence with the programme that structures and supports it. And it is from the articulation between the green space and the buildings that frame it that a mutual benefit occurs, where both enhance each other, providing differentiated and multiplied readings, in a calibrated complicity that is intended to be linked here. The close articulation between the different gardens and the water elements allows for the creation of a natural universe, in constant mutation, truly expressive of the local climate and the biophysical system and which, complemented by the shade of the trees, enhances the cooling of its surroundings in the hottest months, revealing the self-regulating capacity of adaptation to the climate, without resorting to technology.

INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION - 3rd PRIZE

architecture

Pedro Matos Gameiro (Matos Gameiro Arquitectos) + José Maria Cumbre & Nuno Sousa Caetano arquitectos (ASPA atelier)

design team

Pedro Youssef, Miguel Pedro, Mafalda

structural engineer

Miguel Villar

electrical engeneering, fire safetey and security,

gas and energy production, telecommunications

João Mira (Ohmsor)

HVAC air treatment and thermal conditioning,

electromechanical engeneering