Eduardo Souto de Moura transforms a Portuguese village into a luxury retreat.

In Portugal, Pritzker Prize winner Eduardo Souto de Moura has helped transform a historic village into a luxury hotel and retreat. Located in south-central Portugal, near the border with Spain, São Lorenço do Barrocal is surrounded by ancient oaks, olive groves and vineyards. The project is the vision of José Antonio Alas, the eighth generation of family members to live on the property. Uva decided to revitalize the previously thriving settlement and drew up plans to transform it into a farm sheltered complex. The developer commissioned Eduardo Souto de Moura to remodel the existing buildings, which presented a challenge as it required the transformation of a rural farm building into a residential space, with the architect having to collaborate with design studio Anahory Almeida and landscape architect Joao Gomes da Silva.

"It's really a mini-world, a village. It has its own order: street, square, outbuildings, cloisters," explains Eduardo Souto de Moura. "The only way to preserve cultural heritage is to live with it and use it, even if it is damaged in some places.

The São Lorenço do Barrocal complex comprises 22 rooms, 16 cottages and two luxury suites. The grounds also include a farm-to-table restaurant, a spa with cosmetics by Susanne Kaufmann, a winery, stables and a swimming pool with a 4-meter-high granite boulder. The development will be extended with new residential homes that will be integrated into the countryside and set within 780 hectares.

"The process of turning an oil mill, for example, into a living room with a bar, agrarian buildings into residential houses and a barn into a restaurant is very exciting," continues Souto de Mouret. "In this case, changes to the structure require a minimum of intervention. The question is how architecture will be able to respond to these changes. "

Source: i designboom, March 28, 2017.