Between geology and the Atlantic: the Câmara de Lobos Salinas Complex Project. Architecture, Landscape and Regeneration on the south coast of the island of Madeira

Abstract

On the cliffs of Madeira Island, the landscape imposes a rare type of attention: Resilience. This is the case of the Salinas Swimming Pools in Câmara dos Lobos, inaugurated in 2006. We will present the design strategy and its relation to the landscape of this project, which is part of a set serving as a promotional agent for the rehabilitation of the Câmara de Lobos Bay region. In a precision action by Paulo David Architects, in partnership with the Global Landscape Atelier by João Gomes da Silva and Inês Norton, pools are set for the local community. We conducted our analysis through a historical review context and the relation with landscape, based on three concepts - "Drawing", "Voice" and "Poetics", which will provide support for the development of this essay. With an iconographic reading and an analysis of the drawings, we recognised key elements such as stairs, platforms, walls, pavilions, and materiality, through which we read the project, permeated by the discourses of the authors themselves and some critics who have published on this theme. Using some references through Robert Smithson's and the Entropic Landscape concepts, including also Jorge Simmel, we were able to read the design project from a poetic point of view, providing subsidies for a wide perception between two eras, ruin and permanence, that we consider an important view to understand the local.