ARX

The Fórum Sintra project involves a complex intervention on a pre-existing shopping centre attached to the Feira Nova supermarket, which sits alongside the IC-19 on the approach to Sintra (Abrunheira). The shops and cinema were demolished to make way for the new building, while the supermarket remains open, moving up to another commercial level after this intervention and now operating as Pingo Doce. The relationship with the IC-19 is evident, as is the relationship with the Serra de Sintra and its recognisable, undulating silhouette, crowned by the Pena Palace, D. Fernando II's romantic reinvention.

It is from these premises that the design of the new architecture sets out, seeking to reconcile, in a contemporary invention, impulses so distant from one another in time and space.

The building starts from a clear volumetry that follows the expressway and softly wraps around the existing large retail unit. Its mass is separated into two opposing vertical strata: a heavy base in black concrete that anchors the building to the ground, and a second, set-back volume in white render, with a more evident reference to Portuguese tradition. The strong contrast between these materials and textures gives the ensemble a radically abstract and modern appearance, while at the same time ensuring an elegant and culturally integrated presence.

It is into this base that the spaces (malls) of the new Fórum Sintra are carved. Traditionally designed as straight and curved internal streets that meet in squares of varying shapes, here their configuration arose from a set of straight "mall" segments, each with a different constructive identity. They even have their own names (or concepts), used during design and development, which have served as a guide in pursuing the specific character of each setting.

There is, for example, the "concrete mall", with its strong tectonics, entirely in exposed concrete, or the "elegant mall", in black glass, black stone and careful stainless-steel detailing, with filtered light. There is a surprising "green mall", an ethereal, floating space that naturally reveals its infrastructure and lifts us into an abstract plant-like atmosphere, through the green of its glass floor. There is also the "home mall", with its structure and cladding in glued laminated timber. Wood has an irreplaceable tactile quality. It speaks to us of Home. This is where one stops. It is the food court, where the landscaped terrace places us in a framed visual relationship with the Serra de Sintra, as if it were its extension. There are others, each with its own unique character, which together build a strong urban diversity. Just as in the city.

Where these successive linear "malls" intersect, their meeting points generate the Squares, spaces of confluence. Natural light descends onto them from the opaline glass roof lanterns (jewels), with peculiar shapes, which hover above and break through the roof. On the exterior, they reveal their unexpected, geological geometries. It is these lantern-solids that will signal, within the surroundings, the new centrality that Fórum Sintra establishes.

The presence of the large folded metal plane (graphics), into which the centre's name is cut, also unequivocally asserts the building along the IC-19. It is a piece that symbolises the architectural character of the building, free of the usual superfluous decoration, and elegantly direct in its way of building.

We therefore hope it will remain current for longer.