Estoril Sol Residential Complex
In the place where now is the Estoril Sol Residential Complex existed a former Hotel, that constituted a barrier between the hill and the Palmela Park, located North, and the marginal avenue and the access to the beach to the South. The set of the new buildings looks for a scenographic character and, simultaneously, the scale of Land Art through reformulating the relation between figure and background, and giving prominence to the place, understood in a dialoguing dimension between the landscape, the architectonic and the urban components.
The design rehearses the solution of several problems identified in the territory. There was a confrontation between scales in the surrounding area which compelled the new building to exhibit a self-referential character with roots on the Russian Constructivism architecture. With the demolition of the old Hotel, it rendered visible an altimetric difference of 30 meters between the hill of the Castelhana and the marginal avenue, but, for the first time in decades, the Palmela Park became visible from this avenue. This obeyed to design a gradual transition between the high level and the low level of the marginal avenue, creating a basement platform where the new set of buildings rests.
The emergent volumes are implanted according to a play alternating built volumes with voids in order to discover the green of the park and of the hill behind them. Starting from a rule of three regular bodies with square and identical plans, separated by similar distances, the volumes rise in two sets rotated according to the two main directions, the one given by the line of the Castelhana valley and reinforced by the line of the river, and the other given by the coastline.