JOSÉ ADRIÃO

Sal-Rei

JOSÉ ADRIÃO

The village of Sal-Rei, as the remainder of Boavista Island, is currently undergoing a swift transformation process, as a result of the construction of several touristic developments by international agents.

The new hotels, resorts and holiday apartments create new jobs and better standards of living, but also cause radical changes in the existing urban fabric, leading to an unusual scale of construction.
The Sal-Rei project had its origin on the request from a public-private partnership, with the objective of replacing the ancient open-air cinema, located in the village’s main square, and no longer in use, with a building that combined cinema, restaurant and shopping areas, offices and a residential area. The implantation plan and programme of the project determined the approach from the beginning: the creation of an exceptional building.
In accordance with the specifications defined in the order, the building should have 5 or more floors. The main issues to be solved were the scale, volume and the integration in the urban fabric, so that the building was defined as an isolated and detached unit that tries to establish a relationship with the height of surrounding buildings through its irregular volume. The introduction of wide openings in the façade intends to remove the immediate notion of the number of existing floors, granting the building a more informal and domestic character.