The construction of the large park along the river and the rehabilitation of the extraordinary Cava do Viriato allow to redefine the boundary of the traditional city through a large mixed-use building that is intended to provide a new centrality and new services to the historical centre. It is a long building and an urban infrastructure which aims to provide new functions but also new ways of using the city.

The functions open onto the different levels of the natural topography of the site, so that the building is permeable to all fronts: it is very porous in relation to the public spaces on the different sides, but at the same time it guarantees an interior continuity through its various/diverse functions. The park along the river finds a new urban facade which, at its different levels, acts as a promenade, a balcony, or a viewpoint towards the new public spaces. The large volume of the building and the required functions are fragmented into urban blocks that are independent but connected by the ground floor services and by the movable bridges that centre the urban entrance to the city.

The contextual/urban conditions are reinterpreted in the materials used/adopted/employed for the skin of the building, which is built with country stone in two-tone granite. The emerging volumes of the houses along the inner street take on the scale of the row building which, with the shape of its roofs, doubles the power of the topography. There are multiple pedestrian accesses to facilitate its integration into the urban structure of the city.