Santa Maria – Island of Sal – Cape Verde

The Hotel Belorizonte tourist complex, built in the 1930s, was one of the pioneering tourist structures built on Santa Maria beach on Sal Island. The building that constitutes its expansion aimed to introduce new typologies that would provide greater comfort and modernity to customers. The expansion thus has a reception area, bar, auditorium, and 60 rooms, distributed over two floors.

Implanted in L, it marks the northern and eastern limits of the complex, directly facing the main avenue that connects all the hotels at Santa Maria beach. The access to the building stands out from the body of the rooms through a semi-transparent cylindrical volume made of bakelite wood slats. 

The rooms, face inward into the complex at a slightly elevated elevation above the gardened spaces. The corridors are oriented towards the outside, overlooking the landscape.

The building’s design took into consideration the use of passive solar systems, developing a roof design, loose from the building, for natural temperature control inside. There was also the concern to integrate the building into the site through the use of façade cladding characteristic of the island.