The zig-zagging white geometry of the Rowing High Performance Centre latches itself onto the hillside in Pocinho, a small city in northern Portugal. Architect Alvaro Andrade, in coordination with MPT, designed for the complete needs of the elite athletes, including spaces for socializing, training and housing. The Centre echoes the incline of the surrounding Douro Valley; its clean, white angles snaking up the scrubby hillside to connect the different facilities.

Courtesy of the project's architectural photographer, Joao Morgado:

Context

The Rowing High Performance Centre in Pocinho is located in one of the most beautiful and idyllic valleys in the world - the Douro valley - one of the places of choice for champions of this sport. The project is structured into three key components: Social Zone, Housing and Training. The entire project fuses with the reinterpretation of two secular elements of landscape construction in Douro Valley: the walled terraced, a recurrent form of "inhabiting" this place, and the great white volumes of large production units, deployed along the terrain, are formally complex and diverse volumetrically.

Pocinho Rowing High Performance Center:

• Architecture: Alvaro Andradre
• Coordination: MPT
• Client: Vila Nova de Foz Côa Municipality
• Contractor: Manuel Vieira e Irmãos Lda
• Area: 8000 sqm
• Photography: Joao Morgado - Architecture Photography