From the first visit to the project’s site, one reads a constant phenomenon, strongly present in the whole Ave region: a symptomatic disruption of the territory, result of the fragmentation and dispersion of the built fabric.

In order to tackle this reality involving the Silvares’s area and its freeway knot, the first approach to the development of the proposal is to structure and systematize this portion of territory, by controlling its densities, sort its fluxes and plan its “breathing” spaces.

Departing from these principles, the project evolves into a logic of structuring the territory, by creating a new pole in the inner part of the node, which assumes the character of a centrality, and due to its built density, allows the surrounding areas to be endowed of less fabric intensity and so in a closer relation with nature.

Taking the Avenue EN 206 as the main axis, the urban design involves the task of using the avenue as a structural element for the traffic, together with the intersecting road that links the regional areas to the freeway and Guimarães. This intersection footprint is the basis for the creation of 4 islands on the inner part of the knot, where the industrial and business program are laid and connected.

Taking this node as one of the major entrance into the city of Guimarães and to the Ave region, it should be endowed of architectural symbolism. In order to achieve that, two strong ideas are developed: the creation of a big and high block, serving as a landscape mark, and aesthetically based on the local barns and its structural metric, both at the constructive method and on the façade. By using the barns as the basis, one intends to endow the building (a hotel and congress center) of vernacular allusiveness, in order to allow a sense of geographical location and belonging.

The second strong idea is the creation of a “fifth façade” on the rooftops of the industrial plots. For that, there are planned a variety of social and leisure uses, garden areas and the parking lots. By doing so, one creates a strong symbolic image along all the way from the exit of the freeway - which is at the rooftops level - until the entry on the regional and local roads, originating a sort of a “promenade” which wraps the dynamic knot.

The surrounding territory outside the freeway knot is endowed of great nature qualification, supported on continuous green corridors and great agricultural areas. The built fabric appears integrated on this greenery and is developed on a scale and morphology that connects with the surrounding existing fabric, pursuing so a logic of dialog and integration between the new and frenetic inner node, and the more local and urban conventional living outside the node. For that, a group of important collective programs are strategically planned in order to create a consolidated and structured urban logic. These programs are such as the Parish Council, the Parish of Silvares, the school and the market area; all strongly related with low floor housing blocks.