Sines. Composing the Opposites

A steep cliff separates the town of Sines from its seafront. The will to connect these upper and lower parts leads to the design of a bastion contrasting the rocks, which draws a square to the high altitude and sets up as a symbolic gateway from the sea to the city and vice versa: the vertical paths, together with a performance space, are excavated within it.

Sines The city. The sea. Between the two opposites: the cliff. Three horizons.\nHow does the man go up from the sea to the city? How does the man go down from the city to the sea?\nThe man chooses a point, the point. He builds a symbolic gateway.\nAnnouncing itself to those coming from the sea, it’s a guide. Originating from the cliff, it’s a rock. Belonging to the city, it’s a square.\nThe project is articulated in two systems of concrete retaining walls that oppose the steep topography of the cliff and redefine the limits of the city. The first one rethinks the wall of the castle and redraws the polygonal space in which it is placed together with the “Igreja Matriz”; the second defines, at a lower level, a new square, almost a bastion above the sea.\nA bulwark that abandons the typical defensive sense to accommodate in its interior, excavated, the vertical connection devices: stairs and elevator, and a space for artistic performances and concerts. A new building introduced in the square, beside a block of existing houses, works as the entrance to the descent/ascent system.\nThe music quite guarantees a programmatic continuity between the city and the seafront: the stages of the renowned Festival “Musicas do Mundo” are situated in the ground enclosed by the castle and along the bay, which are the two extremes of the intervention.\nTo excavate, to subtract, are the operations through which the project origins.\nThe main space, dig in the mass defined by the retaining walls, is a large cubic void for cultural activities organized in an unconventional way: the stages are empty spaces opening on its vertical faces, connected to other volumes in communication with the exterior to bring the light inside.\nThus the central space, shadowy, has the spectators surrounded by the performance taking place in the stages illuminated by the volumes of light.\nTo the weight of the rock of the cliff, to the mass drawn in opposition to the topography, responds the light articulation of the negative volumes, the ethereal quality of the illuminated spaces.\nIt is the dialectic of the opposites.