programme: concept, preliminary and executive architectural design, interior and landscape design

client: eco surf resort, lda

team: sophia los

collaborators: Engineering Tisem, Luis Henrique Dos Santos, Maria Filomena De Jesus Miranda Frade, Natasha F. Pulitzer, Luca Vecchiato, Chiara Dal Molin, Marta Stocco, Patrizia Callegari and Giuseppe Baruzzo

location: Peniche, Portugal

status: completed, 2014

To be a guest of nature.

The eco-surf camp was built inside a natural reserve 2 km away from the ocean, making it a popular destination for surfers and people fond of ecotourism, in a territory of great food-and-wine, landscape and cultural interest. The four-star village, immersed in the woods, features a surf-house (restaurant, large multifunctional hall, spa area), the keeper’s lodge, a service building, seven bungalows and eighteen custom-made tents (glamping), as well a Skatepark, a bio-lake and a permaculture garden. The village is entirely built with wood. The guests’ opportunity to dwell in areas of outstanding natural and environmental beauty allows for new experiences like restoring a healthy relationship with nature or strengthening the senses. Offering an unusual housing experience highlights the uniqueness of the holiday, as guests live inside tree houses on stilts, enjoying the open spaces, or witness the recovery of existing traditional housing types. The project means to harmonize anthropological and technological aspects. The village generates an ecosystem complementary to the woods, implementing a management model that controls interactions between the buildings and the environment, ensuring input and output balance as much as possible, making buildings increasingly autonomous from infrastructures and resources.

The project was carried out with European funds.