Rye is the name of a project located between Sagres Promontory and Cape St. Vincent.
The main purpose of the building is to create a new destination point within this spectacular landscape.
The new landmark represent the time of arrival and contemplation, a place to engage with the landscape, offering to each visitor the best experience within the immensity of the place.
To imagine a site-landmark that plays with cliff profile, we thought about a building designed in plan by the same folds that form the ground.
We selected the most important landscape elements composing this unique environment.
Each facade host a thematic room where a particular opening directed to each theme allows people to appreciate every single element which is generating this wonderful place.
The site, the land contour and the specific elements generated the shape of this building which clearly reminds to the ancient Portuguese fortresses facing the Atlantic ocean.
Everything was already there, we just need to enrich it with meanings.
A wall, intended as a fortress, seems the perfect condition for a shelter and through some precise opening we can consciously perceive the essence of this place.
This wall is structured to guide the visit as a route, equipped with seats and services, as info-point, toilets, some multi-purpose rooms for meetings, exhibitions or projections and even an outdoor space where travelers could rest the night, surrounded by nature.
Entering in this contemporary landscape fortress the visitor has the opportunity to experience the 5 deepest meanings of this place:
1 . the artificial action of man that builds the most inaccessible areas of the reef, represented by the town of Sagres.
2 . then he could sits and watch the horizontal balance of the endless ocean that is opposed to the cliff verticality.
3 . in the next room he could appreciate the poetry of wind, which is conducted through a "tunnel" space in a sound room. Here he will listen the waves sound, mixed with the force of the ocean wind. In this room we can feel the wind presence protected by our walls.
4 . after that is the moment to test the rough and rugged materiality composing this cliff, through a descending path that leads up to touch the rocks essence.
5 . In the end his attention is captured by the light power of the lighthouse, repetitive and reassuring, which stands on the cliff.
This proposal could be imagined as a continuos covered path, because the simple act of walking is the most important act in reading landscape processes.
