A land of exile and slavery since the 16th century, this place lived mainly on fishing and traditional agriculture for the production of Grogue, a renowned Cape Verdean rum, until the arrival of the new white colonialism, tourism.

“Water surrounds us but does not penetrate the basalt rocks, while the relentless winds dry the little rain on the arid land. The large European fishing multinationals are buying up all our sea and starving our small fishermen. It is a hard life, and the boys leave in search of fortune. Tourism is a good thing, it is our only hope”.

Eloisa and Moreno had suspected it when in 2015 a German tourist agency contacted them for the design of a hotel structure on 5 hectares of land overlooking the sea. What is the key to defusing tourist neocolonialism that lands, flattens and brings home with solutions in which cooperation, mutual benefits, harmony between man and nature conceive sustainable life for all?

From the small studio Ramos Castellano Arquitectos in Mindelo, on the nearby island of São Vicente, Moreno took his old pick-up to go and see the site, on the northern coast of Santo Antão, along the deep canyon of the sugar cane-growing Ribeira da Garça River, beyond the small village of Chã de Igreja.

“I remember, it was May 10, the very strong wind along the vertical cliff from which you could hear the whales singing. It was evening and the starry sky lit up my tent like day. I stayed a week, without drinking water, or electricity, right there, where the restaurant is now, in front of the cemetery. I wanted to understand how we could contribute to such harmony of creation, between the grandeur of the mountains and the blue splendor of Vega reflected on the ocean”.

Neither from the sea nor from the sky, the water came from the bud of an ideal, which became a pencil, a sketch and a project. Thus Eloisa designed three hectares of cultivable surface, fourteen double homes, four villas, a restaurant with a bar, a space for services, a panoramic multifunctional volume, three water tanks for irrigation, a well, a swimming pool.

During the first two years, twenty workers from the adjacent village worked five hectares of abandoned land, transforming them into lush terraces of flowering plants, vegetables and fruit trees.

Carrots, potatoes, tomatoes, onions, greens, mangoes, papayas began to fill the local market, lowering prices and changing the perception of the inhabitants towards the white man who buys their land. “We have converted capitalist energy into sustainable vitality for the social ecosystem.

Ribeira Grande was inexorably depopulating. The use of exclusively local labor, the processing of native raw materials, the acquisition of new skills have trained a new generation of artisans, reversing migratory flows”.

Eloisa was born on this rugged land, she walked for thousands of kilometers on the edges of the riverbeds and experienced their denuding due to water scarcity. For this reason the Biological Settlement in Chã de Igreja has a heart throbbing with water: a well downstream connected to a desalination plant and a hydraulic pump pulsating thanks to the solar energy provided by terraced fan-shaped photovoltaic panels.

Each building is equipped with mechanical systems for filtering and reusing gray water which, through a drip system, irrigate the surrounding nature. The study of the currents and the conformation of the earth has given birth to multisensory paths in which vegetation covers roofs, walls and terraces.