Based on the concept of a vine resort with low density tourism program, we created a project that celebrates wine and a landscape of the vineyard. The idea for the project located in Herdade das Valdas is not to reestablish a rural landscape, but to promote more contemporary and sophisticated use.
The introduction of housing units has a fundamental character, a prime role that highlights relationships and specific densities. The research leads towards the harmony between the urban/tourist character and the agricultural support matrix. The fragmentation of the housing clusters is opposed to the continuous agricultural matrix. The design creates a strategy able to integrate road and drainage infrastructures and define boundaries between private and public, without discontinuing the agricultural matrix and without transforming the landscape into an urban image of the rural landscape.
The management of this matrix-based territory will be maintained through the implementation of agricultural strategies, which turn it into a real agricultural territory. The more dense public area is developed around the ecological lake, an irrigation water retention basin, near which a winery was located. The Master Plan also solves the impact of the noise from the adjacent road with dense tree and shrub groundcover.
