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Cidade Desportiva
Cesar Freitas Arquitectos - Cabo Verde
Media
Drawings, plans, elevations
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In 2015, the government of Cape Verde had the initiative to build for the country a set of infrastructures guided towards reform and dynamization of the education and sports sectors. With that line of thought, Cesar Freitas Arquitectos, presented the proposal for a “Cidade Desportiva” (Sports City), located at Achada São Filipe, Praia – Santiago Island. The land site chosen for the project has 79.4 hectares, and inside the site it’s located the National stadium, with the maximum capacity for 15.000 people. Its location provides many benefits in terms of easy access to the City main infrastructure, mainly the national main roads, the airport “Aeroporto Nelson Mandela” and the seaport “Porto da Praia”. And, besides, it is a terrain with interesting geomorphological characteristics for the creation of infrastructure that will better enable the practice of modern sports. The “Cidade Desportiva” urban plan, had the following guiding principles: sustainable development and ecology, from which was created a set of goals that ended up defining what the project would be, they are: 1- Educate the population in terms environmental systems 2- Develop a model of sustainable urban planning to inspire future Plans and investments. 3- Improve the quality of Human Resources, 4- Aid in the economic growth of the country, 5- Improve economic relationships among national and international companies, 6- Diminish unemployment rate and provide better wages for the population, 7- Motivate efficient managing strategies. Having the main guidelines and after a careful study of the land site, taking into consideration natural resources, infrastructures, legal issues, and so on, the developing of the master plan began with zoning the main activities, followed by the creation of a network of roads forming city blocks, that in turn was used to delineate sites for investments and sports infrastructure. The network is organic in nature, adapting to the terrain, promoting internal mobility, mainly pedestrian and bicycle. The city blocks were developed as open blocks, harboring a variety of uses: sports, leisure, habitations, public infrastructure (education, health and services). The leisure areas were designed to be integrated into the public green areas, using the landscape style “xeriscape”, promoting the use of endemic specimens. At the architecture level, the city aggregates a huge diversity of buildings, resulting in different modalities of uses that makes up the environment – diverse typologies. Yet, all planned with the same concern in mind, use local and regional materials. Capeverdian rocks and wood from ECOWAS make up the materiality of the buildings, since they are low energy materials, durable and recyclable. The stone in particular, was an inspiration source for the design of some buildings that also uses tropical construction techniques simultaneously with passive and active solar strategies. The Plan, its particularly relevant since the government of Cape Verde has bet in the developing of the country through improvements in education and sports, valuing its identity.
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