It designs a rectangular walled enclosure measuring 95 meters long and 75 meters wide, open to the salt marshes where the flamingos that gave the cinema its name were found, and towards the southeast quadrant, capturing the night breezes, the set consists of a “room ” cinema, two bars with terraces, and garden areas.

Francisco Castro Rodrigues (1920-2015) designs a typology determined by climatic conditions, which is assumed to be a shadowed structure that stimulates air movements, defining its identity in the confrontation with nature.
Opened on October 31, 1963 was designed for 1200 spectators, the result of an order from the president of the Cine-Clube do Lobito, the engineer António Vieira da Silva, who joined the distributor Doperfilme to build and manage the cinema.
Private initiative project, like the most cultural buildings associated with the idea of leisure, without restrictive language constraints imposed by the cultural policy of the Estado Novo, allowing an openness to modernity in the design of the project, and the translation of the will of an open society that wanted to be urgently modern.

The program responds to the leisure needs of colonial society in the 1950s, a functional and typological program that represents the atmosphere of well-being and progress that was felt among the urban bourgeoisie of the Portuguese colonies before the colonial war, combining technical and formal to climatic and geographical constraints in the search for tropical architecture.
Exploring the new possibilities of concrete, Francisco Castro Rodrigues achieves structural innovation together with the formal freedom that was possible thanks to the project of engineer Fernando Falcão, with whom he usually worked, enriched with the contribution of the specialist in railway structures, engineer Bernardino Machado, who calculated the roof structure.
The roof designed by a “V” shaped exposed concrete structure with 16 m span, and tensioned by metal cables, together with the huge screen wall, represents the main elements of the building.

br> The entrance, marked by a smaller flap and the “FLAMINGO” sign, is made on the northwest side through a gap, along the central axis of the audience, in the wall that limits the enclosure, and is made up of two contrasting walls, which correspond to to functionally distinct interior areas:
On the right side, a zigzag wall with sharp edges that limits the night bar;
On the left side, an undulating and continuous wall that houses the terrace bar.
The projection booth building It is designed raised from the ground, connected to the circulation areas through ramps, and marked by decorative panels in polychrome marble, just like the main facade and the floors, designed by its author who defended the synthesis of arts and the idea of a global work.
The Cine-esplanada Flamingo is now abandoned and in disrepair, being used as an informal primary school.
Tostões, Ana; Arnaut, Daniela
(EWV project, FCT ref. PTDC/AUR-AQI/103229/2008)