Mortuary House of Barrancos
PROJECT: Casa Mortuária
LOCATION: Barrancos, Beja
CLIENT: Public tender
PROGRAM: Framing of the mortuary and surrounding area, vegetation topography and leisure spaces
DATE: 2020
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE: Amália Souto de Miranda
ARCHITECTURE: CCHE
In a context marked by an undeniably beautiful natural landscape, but punctuated by different technical elements disturbing the atmosphere, the intervention seeks to structure the urban fabric, to calm and integrate these elements in the landscape and to distinguish with quality the two types of access to the place - the accesses pedestrian and road access.
The surrounding landscape has a strong and continuous character that was intended to be preserved and in which it was sought to integrate a new built element. Thus the terrain was modeled to integrate the building, but in order to maintain the character of a rural landscape, where olive groves and hills predominate, with levels created by shale walls. These walls are predominant in the landscape of Barrancos and are prolonged in the green landscape giving shape to a new volume - that of Casa Mortuária.
In the case of a new mortuary, a place often frequented at times characterized by more introspective temperaments, it sought to create different moments and interactions with the surrounding landscape and the building:
1. The viewpoint relationship, enhanced in the continuity of the building, parallel to the car access. That is, to see the landscape, to lose sight.
2. The relationship of entering the landscape, being part of it, through the secondary gravel path, which leads to a wooden platform inserted in the slope, living closely with the soil, the Olive Trees, the biodiversity of the Olival, the running of the water across the hill. That is, being in the landscape.
3. And the relationship with the self, and with the sky, the other life, which can be achieved in the building through the skylights or in the outer square, where a long bench turns its back on view and allows a return to the human scale, in a social dimension as well.
