Restaurante no Parque da Cidade

Located in the hot and parched prairie of Southern Portugal, Beja is one of those interior cities that face abandonment by generations of people drawn to the urban conglomerations that flower by the sea. In such dormant cities, small gems designed by metropolitan talent adorn strangely empty crowns. Such is the case of the new urban park in Beja, which now receives its own jewel in the form of a little restaurant that plays doubly with the idea of refraction. Indeed, this concise design not only plays with heat, water, light and sound waves, but also delivers the possible refractions of late modernity to an environment which is obviously not its own. As in other recent designs by Santa-Rita, the building is half hidden. From a distance, only the three skylights are to be seen erupting in different directions from the ground-level moulding. Water, charged with symbolic overtones here in light of the surrounding dryness, cascades from the walk-on roof and flows into the nearby lake.