The Hotel da Balaia is located near a cliff overlooking the sea. Originally designed for 140 rooms, but it was integrated into a complex that included thirteen homes and an environment of outdoor spaces for more intensive use or only for frame or protection. The project for the complex was drawn up from 1965 by the Studio Conceição e Silva and Mauricio Vasconcelos, which had been established exactly to develop it, and which formed the origin of the large studio Conceição Silva.

Already at that time the organization of the studio included a very diverse and complete group of employees from a professional point of view, led by the titular architects, and who were not only responsible for the different phases and scales of the project (it even included the creation of the Graphic line and the choice of artworks), but of construction. Only the landscape architect Gonçalo Ribeiro Telles came from the outside.

The hotel itself, with two five -storey wings with rooms, all overlooking the sea and staggered to accommodate the Atrium with a high right foot, also extends in a southerly direction to house the rooms, lounges and restaurant, Ranked around a large courtyard and a large opening to the lawn that frames the swimming pools and extends to the cliff. In this way there is a voluntary difference in appearance between the higher body and the result of the repetition of the rooms with their balconies separated by steel and wooden screens, and the body of only two floors of the rooms with its orthogonality of a modular basis and Large windows that are placed backwards to protect against the sun.

The architects chose to leave many of the elements of the massive structure of reinforced concrete visible, which put the emphasis on volumes, fundamental supports or elements of the roof, in contrast to the large brick panels that were plastered and painted. 

Photos & text @docomomo