Pictured above: New beach resort

THINGS are 'hotting up' for Marchini Curran Associates (MCa) as the Nottingham-based architects put the finishing touches to the designs for a new beach resort in Brazil.

MCa was asked to create the masterplan for the 130acre site, a former cocoa plantation, by the developer - Diamond Resorts Brazil Ltd.

The new resort is located in Bahia, on Brazil's Discovery Coast between the provincial capital of Salvador, Brazil's fourth largest city, and the well established resort of Porto Seguro.

MCa has designed the area to include an exclusive beach resort comprising 344 individual villas and a 50 suite luxury hotel. There will also be a commercial district and a beach club looking out onto the Atlantic Ocean.  

The stretch of coast looks set to become an upmarket tourist destination with two exclusive hotels already in the area, and along the 10km stretch of beach leading to the town of Belmonte there are also plans for two golf courses and two 5-star resorts.

Des Curran a director at MCa said: "It is always exciting when we take on new clients, but we were particularly interested in this project as it's so exotic. The scale of the area we were tasked with working on is immense and gave us a lot of scope in terms of what the client wanted to include and the layout of the resort."

Site clearance and enabling work has started and the first villas could be under construction as early as next year.