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Architects: Ramos Castellano arquitectos
- Area: 1325 m²
- Year: 2022
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Photographs:Sergio Pirrone
Island. The island of Santo Antao is located in the middle of the Atlantic about 500 km from Senegal, and has a size of 779 km2 with approximately 80,000 inhabitants. It is the northernmost of the Cape Verde archipelago. A volcanic and mountainous island, populated since the mid-1500s in various phases, by a mixture of Portuguese farmers from the islands of Macaronesia, nobles disliked by the Portuguese crown, Jews expelled due to pogroms, descendants of enslaved people forcibly deported from various regions of Africa. In the northern part of the island, exposed to the ocean winds, are located the villages of Cruzinha da Garça and Cha de Igreja and between them, the organic settlement.
The economy of the island traditionally agricultural, with the predominant cultivation of sugar cane for the production of Grogue, the famous Rhum of the islands, is gradually but rapidly becoming tourist-based. Young people prefer to live in the cities rather than live in the fields due to the lack of opportunities, consequently the island's villages are slowly becoming depopulated.
Clients. About 8 years ago the owners of a German tourist Agency contacted us with the intention of developing a real estate project on a 5-hectare plot of land near the sea.
Project. 3 hectares of cultivable area, 14 double rooms, 4 villas, a service building, a restaurant with lounge, a multifunctional panoramic building, a photovoltaic field, 3 irrigation water deposits, and a well. This is the final program proposed by our Studio, different from their original intentions of real estate. Cabo Verde is a country with a structural deficit of arable area, therefore the techniques currently used in the country, and the consequent agricultural production are insufficient to feed the population of the islands. For this reason one of the first objectives of our project is to use all the cultivable surface of the available area, making it irrigated and suitable for cultivation. During the first 2 years of the project, approximately 20 people from neighboring villages were employed in the construction of about 5 km of terraces, which transformed 5 hectares of abandoned and dry area into approximately 3 hectares of flat, cultivable, and irrigated area. In this way the settlement increased the agricultural surface area and introduced vegetables and fruit into the local market, contributing to lowering the prices of vegetables in nearby communities and increasing supply.
This process changed in some way the local feelings about the visitors, whose presence starts to be perceived as an element that brings energy to the social eco-system, as opposed to the logic of all-inclusive hotels: the dominant economic model on the other touristic islands of Cabo Verde. After having built the terraces and begun to cultivate them, we studied the positions of the houses and rooms, spending different periods of the year camping on the terraces. The points protected from the strong and constant prevailing winds, out of the way of rockfall, and with a view of the valley or the sea, were identified. Having found the most favorable positions, the buildings were positioned, inserting and integrating the project into the mountain like a vast work of land art. An intervention respectful of the power and grandeur of the mountains, which aims to create a holistic harmony with the environment.
Sustainability. The impact on the village as well as the ecological footprint had to be minimal, the sustainability of the project is based on the following principles: the use of local materials available on site, such as basalt stone, sand, and gravel, available a short distance away, in the valley below, and continuously renewable after the rainy season. Therefore the walls of the houses and rooms are made of stone and through thermal inertia they guarantee, along with cross ventilation, climatic comfort avoiding the use of air conditioners.
The use of local labour, and construction techniques commonly used in the area, with simple but contemporary solutions and technologies; the minimum use of heavy machinery in order to increase the use of human energy, to distribute as much as possible in the nearby villages the required capital for the construction, so making the organic settlement close to the local populations. Usually, the water used to reach the ground only when it rained, i.e. 2 or 3 times a year, as Cape Verde is in the same latitude of the Sahara desert.
After the intervention on the site, water is constantly available thanks to a well in the valley with a desalination plant and a hydraulic pump that works with solar energy provided by photovoltaic panels. In addition to this, all buildings are equipped with mechanical systems for filtering and reusing gray water. These waters, after mechanical filtration and through a gravity drop-by-drop system, irrigate the vegetation around the buildings.
Philosophy. The energy that comes in the Cape Verde islands from Germany in the form of money is transformed into a settlement that generates well-being and balance between nature and human beings. A new rural settlement opposed to the predominant form of neocolonialist tourism that invades the islands; It proposes a solution of cooperation, mutual benefit, and fair exchange.
The project began 5 years before the pandemic and only after the pandemic it became current and necessary. It has brought life where there was none, generating food and human resources in areas undergoing depopulation. All the interiors and furnishings, designed by RamosCastellano arquitectos, were craft-worked by artisans from local workshops, always with the aim of distributing capital and knowledge locally, creating a human infrastructure prepared to build future projects, which will be implemented in the same area with high tourist demand.
The vegetation that pervades the environment, covering the garden roofs, walls, and terraces, has been studied with the consultancy of an agronomist in order to create multi-sensory paths which, through the positioning and direction of the prevailing winds, bring the scents to the different points of the settlement. They guarantee direct contact between nature and the visitors, inserting the guest into a rural lifestyle typical of the island and its mountains, revisited in contemporary key and vision.
Particular attention was given to the soundscape of the environments, which due to their position and shape welcome the sound of the waves crashing on the beach below, amplifying it, creating sound environments that contribute to the totality of the experience.
