Praia do Canal / Transient Dwelling

The design process took place through a process of understanding both characters: humans (trekkers, surfers) and site (nature, building preexistences).
The necessity of extending the time spent on the site brought to design a self-sufficient shelter network. Each living spot was based on three elements: the tank (drinking water supply), the fire spot (heating and cooking ability) and the wall (abstraction of the protection from the weather).
As in a tailor workshop, the site was sewed up with view connections between shelters and then trimmed with a work of improvement of the existing pathways.
Each settlement area was analyzed by the vegetation and the climatic apports (winds, breezes) and then the shelter was, within an abstraction approximation, adapted to respond to these inputs. So we have towers up to twelve meters inside the dense forest in order to get ventilation through the chimney effect, and low-rise shelters in very exposed places, like the beach.
The construction technique is thought as an on-site cork-concrete progressive casting. Not only a not destructive way to bring materials to the site, but also a way to let the building grow, slowly, on the place in a true local form.

Praia do Canal, Aljezur _ PT

University project at Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio / SS18

professors: João Ribeiro Ferreira Nunes, João Gomes da Silva
teaching assistants: Teresa Figueiredo, Angela Palmitessa