The MG Coudelaria - signed by the Portuguese architecture firm Visioarq - recently won the A+Awards Popular Choice in the Details - Architecture + Wood category, in the 2022 edition of the prestigious Architizer international competition.

The exuberant presence of Nature throughout the territory of the Minho region, in the North of Portugal, was a structuring axis for the conceptual development of this stud farm. The project, on a traditional Minho property, is marked by a strong natural component in the region where the expression of vegetation, both natural and with human intervention, is visually predominant. 

In this context, the architect had, as his main premise, the framing of the new building with its environmental surroundings. Natural pine wood as the primary material and glued laminated timber (Glulam) naturally appear as solutions, not only to compose the exterior and interior coatings, but also the structure of the buildings.

The structural elements are clearly the building’s protagonists, and everything else develops from them. The skeleton is the base of the form and everything else takes on secondary reading. With this hierarchy, it is somehow intended that the natural elements do not lose the protagonism and importance they deserve, growing over time, involving and integrating more and more into the proposed building. The use of wood on the façade and spans, with more or fewer openings, also allowed, in functional terms, an important control over the natural lighting and ventilation, providing the desired comfort to this space.

Options regarding details have not been forgotten, with all the hardware and accessories to be designed originally for these riding arenas, materializing the simplicity and desired functionality for space with its very distinctive identity, where contact with the protagonists of the equestrian world is made in a markedly sensory way.

To dilute as much as possible each built structure’s weight in the surroundings, two distinct buildings were created in functional terms that, although physically and visually separated, are functionally very close. The Stables on the one hand, and the Covered Riding Arena on the other, are both complemented by an Electric Guide and an Outdoor Riding Arena.