Usually we focus on buildings and not their accesses and the way they are connected. This structure created by a young designer from Oeiras, Portugal, for the FIL (Liboa’s International Fair) is an exception. Inspired by the sails of the portuguese ships, this structure does not only protect the fair’s visitors from wind and sunlight, it also feeds their imagination and wonder with something that seems to defy gravity.
The main materials are steel, aluminium and bamboo, being a blend of traditional and modern materials. It consists in two main parts: the first one, a cover that looks like a “sail”, hanging by steel cables from the second part, a sturdier structure fixed to the ground. This way it emphasizes the illusion of sail flowing in the wind. In word of the designer: “like the Latin Sail defied logic by sailing against the wind”.
Designer : Ricardo Toureiro Dias
looks nice as a standalone structure, like in parks for bridge coverings, but it would be hard pressed to find building that it integrated well with. i can only think of a few that it would not look totally out of place with but none using it in the stated purpose. It is a very nice design, its the building that would fail it.