Location: Vialonga, Portugal

Design Team: Plano Humano Arquitectos

Area: 355 m²

Year: 2026

Photography: João Morgado

Design Features: Mata do Paraíso Scout Park occupies a municipal woodland in Vialonga, Portugal, where Plano Humano Arquitectos has designed essential facilities for local scouting activities. The roughly 19-hectare forest is shaped by pine trees, undergrowth and two seasonal watercourses, with the land rising more steeply through its centre. Rather than establishing a new landmark within this sensitive setting, the project concentrates 355 m² of buildings on gentler ground to the northeast, leaving most of the woodland open for camping, gatherings and outdoor activity.

The programme is divided into three independent volumes. Female and male changing and washroom facilities occupy two buildings, while a third contains communal washing areas. They are connected not by enclosed corridors but by an outdoor field of timber posts, deep eaves and open platforms. Gently curving roofs shift across the group, providing shelter from rain and sun while holding a low horizontal profile beneath the trees.

Timber gives the project its clearest spatial order. Glulam beams and turned, pressure-treated timber posts establish a steady rhythm around softly translucent polycarbonate enclosures. During the day, the white skin diffuses direct light and protects privacy within changing and washing spaces. After dark, the relationship reverses: interior light passes through the cladding, turning the three service cores into quiet lanterns that orient movement at the edge of the forest.

Materials and construction follow a direct, economical and maintainable logic. OSB composite panels, zinc roofing, concrete floors and exposed timber retain their distinct textures, while drainage and services remain part of a legible assembly. Small concrete field kitchens are distributed across the camping areas, and the natural slope near the northeastern boundary becomes an outdoor arena with timber-slat seating, allowing the terrain itself to provide the necessary level change.

The park does not fill the forest with architecture. Instead, a limited set of facilities releases a much larger field of collective use. The three low volumes provide hygiene, shelter and orientation, while pine woodland, sloping ground and camping clearings remain the principal experience. Its strength lies in a construction language that is recognisable without becoming dominant, giving shared life a clear framework while preserving room for movement in nature.

Design Team: Plano Humano Arquitectos was founded in Lisbon in 2008 by architects Helena Vieira and Pedro Ferreira. Both founders were born in Lisbon and continue to lead the practice with project manager Vítor Sá and a wider team of architects and designers. Its work extends across Portugal and abroad, covering residential, cultural, religious, educational, commercial and community programmes.

The studio investigates how materials, techniques and construction systems can define space together, with timber and other natural materials recurring throughout its work. Construction is not treated as a technical layer applied after form has been determined; patterns of use, structural rhythm, maintenance and environmental context shape the architecture from the outset. Mata do Paraíso Scout Park continues this approach through an economical timber frame, translucent enclosures and open colonnades calibrated to collective life in the forest.