This bright white house in Portugal by GSMM Architetti uses the trees on its hillside site to create a sense of intimacy, providing a counterbalance for the openness of its central courtyard (+ slideshow).
Miles away from the nearest town, the single-storey House in Quinta do Carvalheiro was designed by local studio GSMM Architetti as a quiet retreat that has as little impact on the landscape as possible.
“This is a holiday house; a place to renovate energy, to get close to the wild nature, to live in a different way. A place to be alone, for meditation or to be among friends,” architect Monica Margarido told Dezeen.
“Our translation was to design a house where spaces were defined by transparency and reflection of the landscape, to feel protected but at the same time to feel emerged into the forest,” she added.
Cork oak and pine trees surround the house and help to shade it from the sun. “The dense cork trees that surround the house provide intimacy,” said Margarido.
The house has a square plan with a courtyard at its centre, offering residents an uninterrupted view of the skies.
“You lay down on the patio and you dive among thousands of stars, in your transparent envelope,” explained architect Giorgia Conversi, who also worked on the project.
An expansive living area runs along the southern side of the house. Sliding glass panels line two walls, allowing the space to open out to both the courtyard and surroundings.
A fireplace separates the living area from the kitchen. There is also a sheltered terrace where residents can dine al fresco.
Two north-facing bedrooms sit on the opposite side of the courtyard, while a master suite and guest bedroom run along the eastern side of the house.
Here’s some text from the architect Giorgia Conversi:
House Quinta Do Carvalheiro, São Francisco da Serra, Portugal
A new presence in the light and shade of cork trees. Clean and sharp. I’m here. I’m here, but let me cross. Occupy a space without closing. Play changing face between the white presence and the absence of glass: let me cross from the shadows of branches and give back their image to the around gnarled trunks.
Quinta do Carvalheiro is another way of living. Enter and you’re still out. In the middle of the trees. In every point the look finds the way to project far away.
The walls are a pause between a glimpse and other. A border to cross, like all boundaries. A unit of measure for the space that extends around.
A challenge to the concept of “locked at home”. Within four walls. In ourselves. The house doesn’t obscure the view but reveals it. Doesn’t take away the other, doesn’t take away the sky. But is there.
The first day is alienation. The second you start to feel it, the Quinta: is of few words but is there. The third: you lay down on the patio and you dive among thousands of stars, in your transparent envelope. Protected but free. The fourth, you realize that you can change perspective. Look inside. And, as a game of mirrors, seek your hidden corner.
An open house, first of all, to mental disposition. Open to people who arrive, to changing light, to curious insects, to the moon peeping from the hill, to ideas, to the next new discovery.
The glass-walled living areas of this house in Paredes, Portugal, are sandwiched between a top floor wrapped in opaque panels and a basement clad in rugged shale tiles (+ slideshow).
Named 07CBE House, the building was designed by local architecture studio Spaceworkers to create a home for a young family, with communal living spaces separated from the bedrooms and service areas.
The architects based their response on the design of traditional barns that feature a monolithic base for threshing – the process of beating grain to separate it from the chaff. This informed a series of pillars supporting a roof that appears to hover above the landscape.
“In the region, most vernacular buildings that punctuate the landscape are barns supporting agricultural activities, which normally rise from the floor using a pillar structure to create a sense of lack of gravity,” architect Henrique Marques told Dezeen.
“It was this tripartition of a monolithic base, an empty space that turns out to be functional, and a constructed element that stands out in the landscape giving a sense of protection and at the same time structural weakness that fascinated us,” Marques added.
The monolithic structure at the base of the house contains functional facilities including a garage, laundry, storage room and a swimming pool.
This level is predominantly clad in black shale tiles with a raw texture that enhances the rugged and utilitarian aesthetic.
The tiles contrast with the warm ipe wood used to clad the decking, walls and ceiling around the pool, which creates a welcoming space intended as an extension of the interior.
Above the stone-clad base, glass walls reinforce the reference to the open threshing floors of local barns and allow for views into and out of the home’s main family rooms.
“The public floor of the house is exposed to the outside through the huge glass windows which, besides ventilation and light input, allow us to explore the ideas of lightness and structural weakness that we sought,” Marques added.
A living and dining area on this floor is separated from the kitchen by a wall of the ipe wood, which is also used for a section of the north facade to create a contrast between its seemingly natural fragility and the solid mass of the storey above it.
The top floor houses the main private spaces behind an opaque facade punctuated by a series of terraces that allow light to reach the interior.
A pronounced cantilever enhances the impression that the solid volume is floating weightlessly above the ground and reaches outwards to make the most of views from the terraces around its edges.
Insulating composite panels were used to clad the upper storey, creating a seamless surface in the space between the structural concrete beams.
A fireplace contained in a faceted wall creates a focal point between the living area and dining room. Vinyl flooring has been used throughout the interior, while the walls are clad in plasterboard that has been painted white.
The idea of a vernacular architecture (forgotten) and how it seeks to form a clear speech between the landscape and programmatic needs is something that we always admire.
A very successful example of this discourse, are the structures to support agriculture (normally function barns/granary), which in a more or less random would punctuate the countryside, as blocks of ephemeral appearance that levitated on the ground.
Generally, the proposal make reference to the tripartite elements vernacular, the Base, with a static image of monoblock and megalithic, which contain the functions of a nonpublic space, the open area, where are all the public spaces of the house, and that explores the visual and physical relationship with the outside, and finally the Block “gravity” where private spaces are located.
Hinged panels discretely integrated into the facade of this house in Parede, Portugal, by Lisbon architect Humberto Conde protect the property when the owners are away. (+ slideshow).
Humberto Conde designed the family home for a narrow plot next to a three-storey property that informed the overall dimensions of the new building and the position of its street-facing elevation.
To the street, the house presents a minimal facade covered in cement panels and punctuated by narrow vertical windows. The hinged shutters fold down to conceal the windows, protecting the property at night and when the family is on holiday.
“The new building promotes a dialogue between the surrounding area by a language of contrast in its image and shape regarding all the spatial articulation principles that mark the adjacent building,” said Conde.
At ground-floor level, the entrance is shielded by a small boxy canopy, while the hinged shutters that conceal the kitchen and laundry can be folded upwards to admit natural light and views toward the street.
The gently sloping courtyard at the front of the house provides space for parking two cars, while a large patio at the back is surrounded by vegetation and incorporates a lap pool that is illuminated at night.
A long corridor leads from the entrance to the kitchen on the left and into the main living and dining area, which is connected to the garden by full-height sliding glass doors.
A staircase located to the right of the entrance ascends from the corridor to a first floor containing two bedrooms.
Next to the master bedroom is an antechamber between the dressing area and en suite bathroom, which contains a square, swivelling window.
This window looks out at a sculptural tree in a sheltered courtyard with frosted windows on either side, allowing light and ventilation to reach the bathrooms.
A door from the master bedroom provides access to a balcony overlooking the garden at the rear of the house, which projects over the patio below to shade the living spaces.
On the second floor is a third bedroom and doors that open onto a large roof terrace.
Similarly to the hinged panels on the house’s minimal front facade, these doors sit flush with a dark wall that gives the terrace a contrasting appearance to the rest of the white exterior.
The project aims to develop a single house located in the centre of Parede, Cascais, in a site characterised as Historical Urban Space. The lot of the house as a particular elongated and thin configuration like the adjacent lot on the left side – south. The nearby buildings are part of a summer houses morph-typological group that proliferated in the Portuguese coastline in the 40s, 50s and 60s.
These houses were usually built as second houses or summer residences, presenting, in general, a garden that involves them throughout their perimeter. The exception is made in smaller lots of recent date where it was usual the implantation of terraced houses, as a way to potentiate the opposite top sideband.
In this particular case, given the lot’s configuration and taking into account the adjacent house (with three floors above the ground and one basement), we believe that the new construction should certainly be marked out through these alignments, namely the build’s height, volumetry and the alignments of the main facade.
The new building should promote a dialogue between the surrounding area by a language of contrast in its image and shape regarding all the spatial articulation principles that mark the adjacent building – as well as by the used construction details, such as window openings, metric of the facades and visual relation with the exterior.
Safeguarding a small courtyard at the entrance of the house – access area to the parking lot and the house – that assures the alignments, the new building is developed in three floors above ground, freeing at the back (West), a green space which is in direct relation with the social spaces of the house.
Access / Outdoor Spaces
The building is focused on the alignments with the adjacent house, with a East/West orientation, which allows to free part of the lot at East as a reception and decompression space, providing an area for two parking spaces inside the lot.
There’s a longitudinal corridor, delimited by the contiguous lots’ walls, with the introduction of a single vegetable element – a tree – allowing the automobile and pedestrian access to the interior of the housing. It’s also considered the interest in maintaining the permeability of the soil by applying a large green surface at the back of the house. This will allow the infiltration of a significant percentage of rainwater and the optimisation of the access to the infrastructure network derived from extensions installed on the public road.
Functional Structure
The access to the interior of the house is made by a small and slightly inclined ramp, which is also use as a common distribution atrium of the automobile and pedestrian access.
At the ground floor level are the social spaces of the house. Through a central corridor, which serves as the house’s entrance hall, it’s made the distribution to the different spaces of the house. On the left side of the hallway are the kitchen and clothing treatment areas, accessed laterally. In front is the living room, a big space that establishes a close relationship with the exterior, through the use of a garden. Finally, on right side of the corridor are the staircases for the upper floors – the private spaces of the house.
Reaching the first floor through the distribution staircase, located on the right side of the house’s main access, we’ve got two bedrooms equipped with their own private bathroom and closet. Both bedrooms are naturally lit through the openings located on the East and West facades, having been also created a small outdoor garden to canalise natural light and ventilation of the bathrooms of both bedrooms.
The second floor consists on a single space – the third bedroom and a bathroom. Both spaces enjoy natural light and a strong relationship with a terrace facing the West, where a tree coming from the garden on the lower floor emerges.
Portuguese architect João Branco has converted a small office building in Coimbra into a home by installing softwood joinery that functions as furniture, storage and partitions (+ slideshow).
Described by Branco as being “closer to carpentry than building construction”, the project involved adding three sections of woodwork to the lower floor of the two-storey property to create a living room, dining area, study, kitchen and toilet.
“The intervention proposes to let the light flow, converting it into a diaphanous space and thus increasing the feeling of spaciousness,” said the architect.
The first wooden structure sits just beyond the entrance. It creates a study area for two people beneath the staircase, but also accommodates a cloakroom, a shelf and a gridded bookshelf.
Ahead of this, a low and narrow timber piece doubles as both a sideboard and a bench, separating the living and dining areas.
The kitchen and toilet are both housed within the third structure. This is made up of floor-to-ceiling partitions, some of which turn out to be doors, and also includes a row of kitchen cupboards and a countertop.
“The objects are designed to provide the greatest possible sobriety, resulting in a high degree of abstraction and giving the house enhanced spatial clarity,” added Branco.
An oak parquet floor was added throughout the space, while an existing staircase with wooden treads leads up to bedroom spaces on the level above.
Three pieces of furniture create a home. The aim was to convert a former two-floor office into a rental apartment. The proposal, which develops at the lower level, focuses on reconverting a small area, originally subdivided and dark, to accommodate the social areas of the house.
The intervention proposes to let the light flow, converting it into a diaphanous space and thus increasing the feeling of spaciousness. The main decision is not to build, intervening by dispensing with traditional construction work, in favour of a dry approach, much simpler, without creating new walls or divisions. To that, the plant is emptied, introducing in the diaphanous space three wooden pieces of furniture that will organise the space.
Exploded axonometric diagram – click for larger image
Firstly, a box contains wet areas: kitchen and bathroom. A mobile with a bookcase and table gives form to the the entrance and to a small office under the stairs. Finally, a movable lower furniture separates the living and eating areas. With only these three pieces, shape is given to the spaces of the house, always visually connected to maintain unity and flow of southern light.
Floor plan
This work, closer to carpentry than building construction, focuses on the details and encounters. Reducing to a minimum the elements, fittings, switches, etc. the objects are designed to provide the greatest possible sobriety, resulting in a high degree of abstraction and giving the house enhanced spatial clarity.
A corner appears to have been sliced away from this hilltop house in Portugal by architect Manuel Aires Mateus (photos by Fernando Guerra + slideshow).
Manuel Aires Mateus – who alongside brother Francisco runs Lisbon studio Aires Mateus – teamed up with Ana Cravino and Inês Cordovil of fellow Lisbon office SIA Arquitectura to design House in Fontinha for a site outside the rural town of Melides.
Positioned at the peak of a hill, the two-storey house was conceived as a lookout point offering views out across the Fontinha Estate, but was also planned to offer the same seclusion as a typical courtyard residence.
“The house is designed in the balance between a courtyard house, with a protected core relating to the sky, and an opening to the distant ocean view,” said the architects.
The building occupies a cross-shaped footprint. Rooms are arranged around three quarters of the plan, while a rectangular terrace extends out from the middle and a swimming pool runs along one side.
The base of the structure is set into the ground, creating level entrances on both floors. “The topography is modelled, to protect it from the access road, and release the view,” said the architects.
Instead of rectilinear shapes, each block is also gently tapered to make the building appear larger than it actually is.
The sliced-off corner creates a partial arch on the lower level of the building and accommodates an entrance to a living room.
This curved shape reoccurs within the houses’s minimal white interior, in the arched ceiling that spans the stairwell.
The house contains three bedrooms, all located on the upper floor. The two smaller rooms sit bedside one another at the back, while the master bedroom is positioned beside the swimming pool and features its own marble-lined shower area.
The kitchen is also on this floor and features a worktop with a skylight overhead, as well as a triangular fireplace recessed into a corner.
Three pivoting glass doors open the spaces of this floor out to the terrace, offering residents the opportunity to survey the landscape.
Here’s a short description from Manuel Aires Mateus:
House in Fontinha
On the Grândola crest, the house is designed in the balance between a courtyard house, with a protected core relating to the sky, and an opening to the distant ocean view.
The topography is modelled, to protect it from the access road, and release the view. The perimeter delineates the internal lodgings and its transitions. High volumetric spaces, occupied by elements that define functions and atmospheres.
Location: Melides, Portugal Date of project: 2009-2011 Date of construction: 2012-2013
Architecture: Manuel Aires Mateus With: SIA arquitectura Collaborators: Ana Rita Martins Client: Nuno Correia de Sampaio Engineer: Betar | Promee | Campo d ́água Constructor: Mateus Frazão
Surface Area: 130 + 108 sqm Building Area: 160 + 130 sqm Site Area: 50000 sqm
Trios of windows and a new lightwell help to bring daylight through the clean white interiors of this renovated townhouse in Porto by local studio Pablo Pita Architects (photos by José Campos + slideshow).
Pablo Rebelo and Pedro Pita of Pablo Pita Architects added an extra storey to the nineteenth-century residence, known as Casa da Maternidade, to create enough room to house a family.
The architects extended the original staircase, but rather than following its existing back-and-forth arrangement, they wrapped the extra stairs along the edges of two walls to open up a double-height space in between.
A skylight was then added overhead to transform the space into a generous lightwell.
“The lack of an expressive skylight in the original structure defines the approach,” said the architects.
“A new scale is set in the stair core, overlapping this new vertical walkthrough that runs along the existing house, achieving new see-throughs and different spatial relations between all the floors,” they added.
The newly added second floor accommodates a master bedroom and a study, both of which open out to rooftop balconies. There’s also an en suite bathroom encased in glass.
Two smaller bedrooms and a bathroom lined with turquoise mosaic tiles occupy the floor below, while an open-plan living and dining room spans the ground floor and leads out to a terrace and garden.
Here’s a project description from Pablo Pita Architects:
Maternidade
Maternidade House is a single-family dwelling set in a 19th century refurbished house. An example directly restricted to an existing context where the dwelling return to its basis. Adapted to the contemporary needs and standards, the intervention respects its inner scale and typologic scheme.
Conceptually it reinterprets the nuclear core of this type of model, acknowledging the importance of light. The lack of an expressive skylight in the original structure defines the new approach.
A new scale is set in the stair core, overlapping this new vertical walkthrough that runs along the existing house, achieving new see-throughs and different spatial relations between all the floors.
The building is a typical late 19th century Porto house set in the city downtown. It is located in one of biggest city blocks, defined by large gardens in its interior, a bourgeois manor and an early last century maternity. The house itself was a two-storey middle-class example, with little ornamentation and highly modified through time.
The intervention aims to adapt this typical Porto dwelling typology to the daily contemporary routines. This is set from a depuration exercise, developing mainly the stair core, in order to achieve a unifying element that could relate all these different spaces.
The stairs and its light were a recurrent theme in such a narrow and long type of housing. The rooms respect its original scale, and a third floor is added considering the block outline.
The ground floor is the social level, gathering parking, kitchen and living-room, and relating it to the garden located in the interior of the block. In the highest level a guest floor is set with a wide perspective of its surroundings.
Project name: Casa da Maternidade Architecture: Pablo Rebelo, Pedro Pita Consultants: ALFAengenharia, PROQUALITYengenharia, Ricardo Ferreira da Silva Constructor: F. Moreira da Silva & Filhos, Lda Location: Porto, Portugal Date: 2013
A concrete kitchen worktop doubles up as a dining room floor inside this renovated house in Porto by Portugeuse studio Ezzo (+ movie).
Named Flower House, the project involved demolishing and rebuilding the building’s upper storeys, as well as refurbishing the existing ground floor to create sunken zones for the kitchen and living room.
“The project was aimed at creating a series of flowing, contemporary spaces, allowing a greater degree of flexibility and linking the internal spaces of the ground floor in just one: living, dining and kitchen,” said Ezzo.
Kitchen cabinets are slotted beneath the concrete floor, while a small breakfast counter is created by an extended section of the same surface.
The concrete was hand-poured on site and has been finished with a waterproof coating to give it a polished look.
The hollowed-out living area sits adjacent to the kitchen, whilst a dining area and small bathroom are positioned just behind.
The house’s new upper storeys are contained within a traditional vernacular form with a gabled roof, but the exterior has been painted entirely white.
“The core ambition of the scheme was to create a dwelling, which, over time, would come to reflect an approach to contemporary renovation work,” explained the architects.
The first floor accommodates a pair of bedrooms that open out onto a shared balcony, overlooking the surrounding city rooftops. Both bedrooms feature built-in storage space.
A bathroom with bright blue walls is located on the left hand side of the landing, while a wooden ladder leads up to a study room and seating area on the top floor.
A courtyard is located at the back of the house and is surrounded by walls clad in polycarbonate plastic panels.
Flower House involved the remodelling of a small old house to provide space to accommodate a single client. The scheme included the refurbishment of the existing ground floor, demolished of the 1st floor as well as the construction of a new one.
The building is set within heritage site, which has drawn out a unique response to the history and settings. The building geometry, orientation and size is driven by the site constraints.
At the site, the existing buildings are idiosyncratic of their type, with flank elevations and roof profiles, which run the breadth of the neighbourhood of Foz Velha. These buildings are detailed in a utilitarian manner, with an honesty of material and detailing one would expect.
In responding to this condition, the design of the new building make clear reference to their historical parts. A two storey dwelling with character and personality, respectful of the existing neighbourhood, and taking advantage of the views.
In the interior the project was aimed at creating a series of flowing, contemporary spaces, allowing a greater degree of flexibility, linking the internal spaces of the ground floor in just one: living, dining and kitchen. Two different stairs ensures the connectivity between ground floor living spaces and upper floors of bedrooms and study space.
The core ambition of the scheme was to create a dwelling, which, over time, would come to reflect an approach to contemporary renovation work and create a flexible environment for who will live there.
Accessible via a path with only 2 m wide, flanked by old houses, externally, the building is wrapped in a homogenous white skin, which wraps up from the landscape.
This relationship of building to street retains those historic associations described, and similarly allows for a contemporary sculptural form to sit comfortably within its context.
Project: Flower House Architects: EZZO – César Machado Moreira Collaborator: João Pedro Leal Location: Porto, Portugal Project Area: 120 sqm Project year: 2010/2013 Engineering: Penman Ldª Constructor: Van Urbis
Portuguese studio Tiago do Vale Arquitectos has renovated a townhouse in Braga that was built as a servants’ house in the late nineteenth century and modelled on the style of an Alpine chalet (+ slideshow).
Tiago do Vale Arquitectos overhauled all three storeys of the Three Cusps Chalet, which was originally built at a time when a number of migrants were returning to Portugal from Brazil and were commissioning grand houses influenced by trends from across Europe and South America.
Now transformed into a light and modern home and workplace for a couple, the old house forms part of a row of three properties that were built to house the servants of a nearby palace, combining typical Portuguese materials and proportions with Alpine forms and details.
“In general everything is original, or reconstructed as the original, which required the elimination of many unqualified more recent add-ons,” the architects told Dezeen.
A vivid shade of turquoise differentiates the building from its neighbours, while decorative eaves and stonework have been restored around the edges of the roof and windows.
“We used a combination between the colour palette of the nineteenth century – pastels were quite popular at that time and in this region – and a sensibility to harmonise it with the street at its present state,” said the architects.
Unnecessary partitions and extensions were removed from the interior, creating open-plan spaces that are defined by the position of a central staircase that had previously been boxed in.
At street level, a large split-level space with a white marble floor can function as either a shop or office. A large glass partition fronts the staircase on the left-hand side of the space, revealing the route up to the domestic spaces above.
This staircase narrows with each flight of stairs, intended to emphasise how the degree of privacy increases on the upper levels.
The first floor sits just above the ground level at the rear of the building, which created an opportunity for a small outdoor deck. A kitchen and dining area are just in front, while the living room is positioned opposite.
The final storey accommodates a large bedroom with simple furnishings, as well as a timber-lined dressing room that contrasts with the clean white aesthetic of the other rooms.
Here’s a project description from Tiago do Vale Architects:
The Three Cusps Chalet
Historical context
In the second half of the 19th century Portugal saw the return of a large number of emigrants from Brazil. While returning to their northern roots, specially in the Douro and Minho regions, they brought with them sizeable fortunes made in trade and industry, born of the economic boom and cultural melting pot of the 19th century Brazil. With them came a culture and cosmopolitanism that was quite unheard of in the Portugal of the eighteen-hundreds.
That combination of Brazilian capital and taste sprinkled the cities of northern Portugal with examples of rich, quality architecture, that was singular in its urban context and frequently informed by the best that was being done in both Europe and Brazil.
Built context
The “Three Cusps Chalet” is a clear example of the Brazilian influence over Portuguese architecture during the 19th century, though it’s also a singular case in this particular context.
Right as the Dom Frei Caetano Brandão Street was opened, a small palace was being built in the corner with the Cathedral’s square and thanks to large amounts of Brazilian money. It boasted high-ceilings, rich frescos, complex stonework, stucco reliefs and exotic timber carpentry. In deference to such noble spaces, the kitchen, laundry, larders and personnel quarters, which were usually hidden away in basements and attics, were now placed within one contiguous building, of spartan, common construction.
Built according to the devised model of an alpine chalet, so popular in 19th century Brazil (with narrow proportions, tall windows, pitched roofs and decorated eaves), the “Three Cusps Chalet” was that one building.
Due to the confluence of such particular circumstances it’s quite likely the only example of a common, spartan, 19th century building of Brazilian ancestry in Portugal.
Siting at the heart of both the Roman and medieval walls of Braga, a stone’s throw away from Braga’s Cathedral (one of the most historically significant of the Iberian Peninsula) this is a particularly sunny building with two fronts, one facing the street at west and another one, facing a delightful, qualified block interior plaza at east, enjoying natural light all day long.
At the time of our survey, its plan is organised by the staircase (brightened by a skylight), placed at the centre of the house and defining two spaces of equal size, east and west, on each of the floors.
The nature of each floor changes from public to private as we climb from the store at the street level to a living room (west) and kitchen (east) at the first floor, with the sleeping quarters on top.
Materials-wise, all of the stonework and the peripheral supportive walls are built with local yellow granite, while the floors and roof are executed with wooden beams with hardwood flooring.
Architectural project
Confronted by both its degrading state and degree of adulteration, and by the interest of its story and typology, the design team took as their mission the recovery the building’s identity, which had been lost in 120 years of small unqualified interventions. The intention was to clarify the building’s spaces and functions while simultaneously making it fit for today’s way of living.
The program asked for the cohabitation of a work studio and a home program. Given the reduced area of the building, the original strategy of hierarchising spaces by floor was followed. The degree of privacy grows as one climbs the staircase. The stairs also get narrower with each flight of steps, informing the changing nature of the spaces it connects.
A willingness to ensure the utmost transparency throughout the building, allowing light to cross it from front to front and from top to bottom, defined all of the organisational and partitioning strategies resulting in a solution related to a vertical loft.
The design team took advantage of a 1.5 m height difference between the street and the block’s interior plaza to place the working area on the ground level, turning it westward and relating it to the street. Meanwhile, the domestic program relates with the interior plaza and the morning light via a platform that solves the transition between kitchen and exterior. This allows for both spaces to immediately assert quite different personalities and light, even though they are separated by just two flights of stairs.
The staircase geometry, previously closed in 3 of its sides, efficiently filters the visual relations between both programs while still allowing for natural light to seep down from the upper levels and illuminate the working studio.
The second floor was kept for the social program of the house. Refusing the natural tendency for compartmentalising, the staircase was allowed to define the perimeters of the kitchen and living room, creating an open floor with natural light all day long. Light enters from the kitchen in the morning, from the staircase’s skylight and from the living room in the afternoon.
Sections
Climbing the last and narrow flights of stairs we reach the sleeping quarters where the protagonist is the roof, whose structure was kept apparent, though painted white. On the other side of the staircase, which is the organising element on every floor, there’s a clothing room, backed by a bathroom.
If the visual theme of the house is the white colour, methodically repeated on walls, ceilings, carpentry and marble, the clothing room is the surprise at the top of the path towards the private areas of the house. Both the floor and roof structure appear in their natural colours surrounded by closet doors constructed in the same material. It reads as a small wooden box, a counterpoint to the home’s white box and being itself counterpointed by the marble box of the bathroom.
Fitting with the strategy of maximising light and the explicitness of the spaces, the material and finish choices used in this project were intentionally limited. White colour was used for the walls, ceilings and carpentry due to its spacial qualities and lightness. Wood in its natural colour is used for the hardwood floors and clothing room due to its warmth and comfort. Portuguese white Estremoz marble, which covers the ground floor, countertops and on the bathrooms and laundry walls and floors, was chosen for its texture, reflectivity and colour.
Window and door details
All of the original wood window frames of the main façade were recovered, the roof was remade with the original Marseille tiles over a pine structure and the decorated eave restored to its original glory.
The hardwood floors were remade with southern yellow pine over the original structure and all the surfaces that required waterproofing covered with Portuguese Estremoz marble.
Ground floor window frames were remade in iron, as per the original, but redesigned in order to maximise natural illumination (as on the east façade).
Window and eaves details
Architecture: Tiago do Vale Architects, Portugal Location: Sé, Braga, Portugal Construction: Constantino & Costa Project year: 2012 Construction year: 2013 Site area: 60 m2 Construction area: 165 m2
Portuguese studio DNSJ.arq has completed a cluster of three white houses on the outskirts of a small town in southern Portugal (+ slideshow).
Located just outside Aldeia do Meco, the first of the three houses was designed by DNSJ.arq as a home for the clients, while the other two function as rentable holiday homes.
Two of the houses are located on a flat section of the site close to the street and the third house is positioned behind them, slightly further up the hill.
Architect Nuno Simões said the team decided to arrange each house in a different composition, “almost like a jazz improvisation.”
“We decided to make the bigger house for our client – in the hilly side of the land with the swimming pool – and the other smaller two for rent,” Simões told Dezeen.
“The two smaller houses, which have a more congested situation, were for living mainly on the patios, while the larger house faces a small river with a glimpse of the ocean,” he added.
Each house has brick walls that coated with white render, as well as poured concrete floors. All three open out to patios on two levels and feature their own private swimming pools.
A garage connects the two smaller houses. A pathway leads to the third house, which is twice as big and boasts more bedrooms and a spacious kitchen.
The intervention that is proposed is located within the urban perimeter of Aldeia do Meco. It is a narrow strip towards sunrise/sunset, flat up to about half of the land and thereafter acquiring an pending until the river bordering the west.
The settlement program includes the construction of three houses, two for rent and a residence for the owners.
The first two houses are grouped together (Casa 1 and Casa 2) on the flat part and closer to the street and settled the other house (Casa 3) on the ground to the west.
This house adapts to the topography, adjusting to the presence of existing trees, and enjoying the views through a system of terraces that extend the house outdoors. Unlike Casa 3, Casa 1 and Casa 2, more exposed to neighbouring buildings, enjoy a more intimate relationship generated by a system of courtyards.
Important starting point was the impossibility of any sophistication constructive opting for current building systems.
The banality of the building grew into a minimal architectural lexicon composed of white unequal volumes, but similar in nature. This game was complemented with the austerity of the chosen materials.
This house by Portuguese architect Miguel Marcelino rests on top of an old warehouse in Torres Novas, central Portugal (+ slideshow).
Miguel Marcelino extended the existing building upwards to create the single-storey residence, which overlooks a valley planted with olive groves.
The warehouse was first built in the 1980s and was originally planned as a two-storey structure, although it has taken 30 years for the second phase of construction to take place.
Marcelino used brickwork for the exterior of the extension, then added white paint to unite the two floors.
A protruding concrete slab divides the two storeys and creates a balcony around two sides of the building, while a similar-sized roof slab forms a canopy overhead.
A bridge with a steel balustrade leads to the house’s entrance from the adjacent hillside and is positioned alongside a large olive tree.
The entrance hall opens out into a living and dining area, featuring a sliced-off south-east corner that increases the size of the surrounding balcony.
Three bedrooms are positioned along the east side of the house, while the kitchen and bathroom sit on the opposite side.
Concrete walls and ceilings are exposed in each room and timber panels covers the floor.
The briefing was to build a three-bedroom house on top of a warehouse built in the 80’s, where part of the roof was made with a flat slab and a small balcony, precisely with that idea of later building the house.
Given the constraints of the existing warehouse, the house shape turns out to be automatically set: a box that rests on the existing structure.
The rooms are placed to the east, the toilets to the west, as well as the kitchen, looking to a centennial olive tree.
The existing balcony will be maintained and “duplicated” as a shading element.
The living room is placed south where its south/east corner is diagonally cut in a way that the balcony could enlarge and offer an outdoor area protected from the sun and rain, overlooking the valley.
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