Pico: A Productive Landscape Part 2 Project 2015 Daniel Titchener Kingston University Kingston | UK Pico is one of nine volcanic islands in the Azores colonised in 1460 by the Portuguese. The growth of vines soon became necessary for the Catholic Eucharist and established a unique type of grape cultivation. Due to the exposure to Atlantic salt spray and a lack of soil, it forced vines to grow through the cracks in the basalt rock. Protected by dry-stone walls called “Currais”, they created a lace like pattern around Pico’s coastline, however, its economy was drastically hit when disease struck the vines in the mid-nineteenth century. This left large areas of Currais abandoned and overgrown by a homogenous shrub thicket. Neighbouring Madalena, Pico’s main town and harbour, a large part of the island gained UNESCO world heritage status in 2004. Today, Pico has an incentive of doubling wine production in the next 10 years. A new proposal aspires to reestablish Pico’s vinicultural economy with a connection between Madalena and the Currais, creating a definitive edge to Madalena and a belvedere for its surroundings. A winery and market employs an architecture that blends with Pico’s ruinous qualities and reclaims the interior as a contiguous part of the town, from which one is connected to the landscape. Tutor(s) Daniel Rosbottom