The Santa Maria da Feira City Council needs to build the Headquarters Building for the New Town Hall and a New Town Hall Square. The new project is the result of the municipality's need to concentrate and better organise all its services, which are spread across different buildings in the city.
Placed between a point of confluence in the city and a distributing core between the historic centre and other key public facilities, there was a desire to design a striking vertical element in the landscape, in a single gesture, and one that would twist in on itself.
Adapted to its surroundings in the horizontal moment, the tower grows vertically in an integrated manner at the moment of contact with the city, thus creating a symbiosis, a continuity between public and private space, between the urban fabric and the built environment.
Despite the building being a volume with an impact on the landscape and representative of the local power, its contact and direct relationship with the city and surrounding public space, is subtle. The volume of the base, despite being more opaque, becomes the element of connection and transition between public and private space.
In contrast to the concrete opacity of the horizontal base of the proposal and the contact element with the city, the vertical element is clad in glass, symbolizing transparency, openness, communication and responsibility. With a marked hierarchy in height, the services with public access are located on the lower floors. The top and management floors are located on higher levels.
Through its torsion, the tower becomes the point around which the four uneven quadrants that mark four moments of differentiated spaces for the public are defined: the first quadrant features a large park where recreational and sporting activities can take place; the second a large Square that articulates the public space and the entrance to the City Hall building; the third quadrant is marked by an area with more intimate vegetation that allows for calmer moments; finally, at a higher elevation, the fourth quadrant reveals an accessible rooftop with access to an amphitheater, terrace and occasional green areas.
The new Town Hall tower merges functionality with design, integrating into the cityscape and representing a new approach to public and private space. It enhances the urban environment and sets a standard for combining contemporary with the city's history and social fabric.
This project won 3rd prize. But due to a small technicality issue in a form the proposal was disqualified.