Plopsaqua De Panne

Name: Universal Rocks Portugal — Sales Offices and Workshop
Address: Rua da Cerquinha 186, Ronfe, Guimarães, Braga, 4805-398, PT

Interior rockwork and façades built for a permanently humid, chlorinated indoor environment, installed inside a finished building.

The diary

The rock exists in steel long before it exists in stone.
01Phase 1
Setting out and steelwork
Steel is carried in through finished doors and assembled inside — there is no craning over the roof.
Shotcrete is sprayed and shaped in the same movement.
02Phase 2
Shotcrete
Mixes and reinforcement are specified for constant humidity and chlorine, with drainage falls built into every horizontal surface.
Texture is cut by hand, against the clock of the setting concrete.
03Phase 3
Carving, wet
Sculptors work behind the spraying crew while the material is still workable, cutting fractures, strata and tool marks in the round. Each face is carved once, in place.
Buildings grow out of the rock, not in front of it.
04Phase 4
Façades and details
Themed buildings, timber, plaster and ironwork are built into the same surface, so the architecture and the rock read as one set rather than as decor placed against a backdrop.
Water is tested full-scale before a single coat of paint.
05Phase 5
Water, planting and integration
Basins, waterfalls and submerged structures are tested and adjusted, then planting is threaded into pockets left in the rock so vegetation and stone age together.
The last layer is the one that decides whether it looks real.
06Phase 6
Painting and handover
Painting is done under artificial light, then checked again under the daylight coming through the roof.