Azores Retail Park

Central Ponta Delgada, close to the hospital, and the first retail park to be built on the island. The type comes with a predictable catalogue: a retail box, a long frontage, a large car park.

The first site visits changed the approach. São Miguel has an identity of its own in the relationship between the green landscape and the built landscape of its towns, and a building of this size could not distort it. The functionality a retail park requires was kept intact — what changed was everything else.

The starting point was the material the island is made of. The colour of the volcanic earth sets the cladding of the building. The form takes from the swell of magma and the rounded shapes an eruption leaves behind, and it is the roof canopy, the main element of the scheme, that carries that shape and passes it on to the rest of the building.

The scheme also called for considerable infrastructure work. With around five hundred parking spaces, the traffic in the surrounding area had to be reworked and the adjoining infrastructure set up to absorb the new load, including a dedicated road and an access roundabout.