Sustainability and Mobility for All

This equipment is already a reference in the high rowing competition, at national and international level. Its vocation for sport, along with adapted sport, is an innovative and avant-garde approach: "Accessibility and Mobility for All" was one of the initial premises of the project, where integration processes were sought in more humanized and inclusive spaces, in a context of high competition sport, to accommodate also less mobile athletes.

For Paula Teles, mpt®, an expert on Accessibility and Mobility for All, the CAR was a "challenging project at all levels", due to the need to investigate the forms and processes of integration in a high competition sport context.

The highly sloping terrain has posed numerous obstacles to the multidisciplinary team, which, seeking to integrate the demands of high competition sport and the mobility needs of the Adapted Rowing and Canoeing practitioners, required to "not forget the salutary integration with the environment, thinking and projecting universally ", Integrating Accessibility for All as well as Sustainability into its genesis.

This is also a work of relevance for Sustainability concerns. Energy efficiency was one of the priorities: "the set of options adopted allowed us to combine principles of passive energy management of the building in a more articulated way. In the bedroom zone, with periods of longer stay with less physical activity, the "skin" exposed to the outside is reduced, it slopes down, half-buried in the ground ". Looking for the energy optimization that passive solar energy allows, "the rooms expose skylights to the south, looking for the sun, since the slope of implantation of all the built is facing north. Interior walls of the rooms in apparent concrete reinforce possibilities of storage of solar thermal energy ", as described by the project's architect, Álvaro Fernandes Andrade, of SpacialAr-te.

The Pocinho High Performance Center is a new architectural landmark on the international scene, and a landmark in the state-of-the-art of inclusive and cutting-edge architecture.