Hasta La Ideas

Architecture studio NOARQ has doubled the size of a house in northern Portugal by extending its rooftop into the hillside (+ slideshow).

The resident family of four had outgrown its home in Vila Nova de Famalicão and asked Portuguese architect José Carlos Nunes de Oliveira of NOARQ to give them more space, as well as a garage.

The architect began by removing partitions in the existing house to create larger rooms. He then replaced any lost rooms in a new structure inserted between the house and the inclining landscape.

“The proposal harnesses the most important pre-existing element, the roof, and uses the force in its profile to merge into the woods,” he says.

Living and dining rooms are all accommodated in the original house, while three bedrooms are contained in the extension.

A protected terrace is slotted between the new and old structures with a corridor running along one of its sides. Residents can directly access the courtyard from various rooms, plus a set of pivoting Corten-steel doors leads out to the surrounding garden.

The garage, with room for up to three cars, sits at the lowest level of the site and is flanked by a retaining wall of pale stone.

Other Portuguese houses we’ve featured on Dezeen include a row of stables converted into a summer retreat and a set of cabins in a woodland park. See more residences in Portugal.

Here’s more text from NOARQ:

NP House

The project was for the extension and renovation of a single family house with 262.09 square metres of gross floor area, to adjust to the actual needs of comfort for a family of four persons and the housing laws and rules of construction and building regulations.

The building was currently in the middle of a great mass of trees, as a mark. The housing consists of two floors, the ground-floor dedicated to service functions and garage, and the top floor exclusively dedicated to housing.

Without questioning the value of the pre-existence, the proposal maintains the current volume, offering the services and the social spaces of the family.

The expansion develops in the direction of the slope (west), where it opens a space for external expansion, contained in the far west area of the new rooms and the corridor north by stitching both areas of housing.

Adjacent to the house at the ground-floor is nesting in the back of the hill, the garage, hidden under a coating plant.

The intervention is in essence an extension of each of the habitable areas, increasing the number of existing health services (maintaining the same number of rooms), yielding a total gross area of 469.11 square metres.

The landscape was the subject of major concern. The new emerges organically from the old. The building emerges as a root that grows, goes through the ground and anchors to life on earth.

On the point of view of language the proposal harnesses the most important pre-existing element – the roof – using the force in its profile to redesign and merge into the woods.

The house is raised on a structural system of walls, retaining walls and reinforced concrete slacks interspersed with faces of masonry. Interior floors have wood flooring American pine, with the exception of the service rooms cover with stony coverings. The garage and the den’s floor is in epoxy and the exterior spaces cover by wooden deck.

The entire building will be covered by an acrylic plaster reinforced with glass fiber network cladding clipped (ventilated wall system). The roof will be in zinc. The interior walls and ceilings are plastered and painted or plaster according to the spatial and functional requirements of each compartment.

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by NOARQ appeared first on Dezeen.

Architecture studio Spaceworkers has inserted a house-shaped cultural centre inside a nineteenth-century schoolhouse in Parades, northern Portugal.

The Centro Interpretação functions as an information centre for the Rota do Românico, a series of tourist trails dedicated to the Romanesque architecture and monuments in the valleys that surround the town, and also hosts exhibitions and educational activities.

To respect the architecture of the existing building, which had formerly been used as the school’s gym, Spaceworkers added two monolithic black volumes, both with gabled profiles that follow the angles of the roof.

“We wanted to preserve the identity of the place with our intervention,” architect Rui Dinis told Dezeen. “We didn’t want to lose the shape of the ceiling, so we chose to add a kind of replicating structure.”

The largest of the two volumes houses an informal auditorium filled with small black stools, while the second contains an information desk with a storeroom and toilet tucked behind. The floor between the structures is also painted black to create the impression of a continuous entity.

Apart from a concrete arch that curves around the centre of the space, the rest of the interior is painted white, creating a visible contrast between old and new.

“The white creates the atmosphere, the black gives some form and the activities of the space will bring the other colours,” explained Dinis.

We’ve featured a few buildings with house-shaped structures inside on Dezeen. Others include a Japanese fashion boutique and a house with a metal exterior and wooden interior.

See more monochrome interiors, including shops by Zaha Hadid and a Singapore hotel filled with statues.

Photography is by Fernando Guerra.

Here’s some more information from Spaceworkers:

Centro Interpretação do Românico Paredes

Preserving the identity of the location and characteristics of the building concerned was for us the slogan for the intervention.

The proposed space appears as a “house inside the house”. A “solid” volume landed within the existing space that reacts to the geometry of the shape.

In this amount is subtracted from the central area thus resulting in a kind of square separating the different functions of the space. On the one hand, a monolithic volume with a central door is “auditorium” on the other, a volume cut is receiving and store.

Project: public building
Year: 2012
Size: 100m2

Address: Paredes
Client: Rota do Românico
Author: spaceworkers®

Team:
Principal architects: Henrique Marques, Rui Dinis
Architects: Rui Rodrigues, Sérgio Rocha, Rui Miguel

Finance director: Carla Duarte – cfo
Engineer: Simetria Vertical, Lda

The post Centro Interpretação do Românico Paredes
by Spaceworkers appeared first on Dezeen.

A house-shaped white box seems to float above the dark grey reception of this dental clinic in Porto by Portugese architect Paulo Merlini (+ slideshow).

“The interior of the box mimics the idea of being under a roof, giving the user a familiar sensation of comfort and helping them to calm down before the treatment,” architect Paulo Merlini explained.

Rows of round white lamps illuminate the reception and plant pots hang over a raised bed of gravel at the back of the entrance space, beyond which the brightly lit treatment rooms are located.

A small window has been inserted into the corner of the white box to allow light to pass through to the upper floor, where there’s a dark grey waiting area outside a laboratory and meeting room.

The upper level is accessed via a floating white staircase alongside the mirrored side wall of the reception.

We’ve featured lots of unusual dentists, including a Japanese clinic arranged in a minimalist white grid and a practice in Portugal divided by stripy glass screens – see all dentists on Dezeen.

Other projects in Porto we’ve featured include an apartment with a hammock hanging over the stairs and a restaurant inside a nineteenth century townhouse – see all architecture in Porto.

Photographs are by Joao Morgado.

Here’s some information from the architect:

The uncommon form, narrowness, vertical amplitude of the space and the two big glass façades placed on the main and back façade defined the organization of the spaces.

The reception and waiting room is characterised by a big white box that floats in the air, playing with the vertical amplitude of the space.

The interior of the box mimics the idea of being under a roof, giving the user a familiar sensation of comfort and helping them to calm down before the treatment.

From the “roof” a series of lamps float in the air, filling the space with light. The floating box stops the excessive light and consequent heat coming from the main facade by the end of the day.

On the other hand its big mass pushes the rest of the working spaces to the back façade. This receives a great sky light, with the ideal conditions for working.

Above: ground floor plan

Above: first floor plan

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by Paulo Merlini appeared first on Dezeen.

This house outside Lisbon by architects GGLL Atelier has a grey base that nestles into the landscape and an angular white upper level that follows the incline of the hill (+ slideshow).

GGLL Atelier designed the residence as the home for a family of four and it is located beside a golf course.

The house features an L-shaped plan that folds around a patio on the south side of the house. “The L-shaped plan came from the need to create an exterior area that is protected from the wind from the north,” architect Gary Barber told Dezeen.

A garage, a wine cellar, a games room and a cinema room are located on the ground floor, while living rooms, bedrooms and a library benefit from the higher ceilings on the first floor.

“We split the house into two distinct volumes,” said Barber. “The base is where the least common areas of the house are found and it has a more solid nature, kind of working like a pedestal. The upper volume of the house is where the more normal spaces are found and is white to show the clean lines.”

A terrace occupies the roof, offering a view out over the golf course.

Other recently completed houses in Portugal include a residence with red concrete walls and a bright white house with a sprawling extension.

See more houses in Portugal »

Photography is by Fernando Guerra.

Here’s a project description from GGLLatelier:

Quinta dos Alcoutins Lt.4

The House is inserted on an estate situated at the northern limit of Lisbon, the lot is north-facing with an accentuated decline.

A grey volume draws the exterior spaces of the house and rectifies the inclined nature of the terrain, allowing the social areas a better solar exposure, the slanting white volume floats over it, turned away from the exterior limits of the lot and opening over the garden and the swimming pool.

The distribution is pragmatic and very clear: The grey volume is filled with the complementary spaces of the house, illuminated by a patio carved in it (shower room, spa, cinema room, wine cellar and garage) the white volume is occupied by the main spaces of the house (lounge, library, kitchen and bedrooms) privileged by the transparency towards the garden and swimming pool. The rooftop is torn by a white terrace overlooking the golf-course and the city skyline.

Architecture: GG. LL atelier – Gabriela Gonçalves, arqtª, Leonel Lopes, arqtº
Design Team: Miguel Malaquias, arqtº, Gary Barber, arqtº, José Doroana, arqtº; Ana Braga, arqtª
Structural engineer: Betar, Miguel Villarengº
Constructor: Ultracasa 2001

Above: ground floor plan

Above: first floor plan

Above: second floor/roof plan

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by GGLL Atelier appeared first on Dezeen.

Bold primary colours punctuate this stark concrete extension to a secondary school outside Lisbon by Portugese architect CVDB Arquitectos (+ slideshow)

Braamcamp Freire Secondary School, located in the Pontinha area just outside Portugal’s capital city, was originally built in 1986 as five prefabricated units.

CVDB Arquitectos restructured the dispersed units into a single building by connecting them with new corridors, creating what they call a “learning street”.

The school is now arranged around a central courtyard, created by joining up the existing buildings.

A series of punctured concrete walls support a new set of classrooms on one side of the courtyard and provide a sheltered area where pupils can gather.

The facades combine exposed in situ concrete and prefabricated concrete elements in order to minimise building and maintenance costs.

The windows have been recessed into the facade to create a series of vertical concrete louvres, each painted red, yellow or blue to add a flash of colour to the exterior.

Splashes of primary colours also punctuate the main staircase and selected interior walls, including the blue wall of sound absorbing concrete blocks.

The school hall is lined in vertical timber studs and acoustic panels.

We’ve featured a number of schools on Dezeen, including a gabled extension to an English boarding school and a Vietnamese school with open-air balconies – see all schools on Dezeen.

Other buildings in Portugal we’ve published lately include a home on a golf course complex outside Lisbon and a bright white building in the monastery town of Alcobaça – see all Portugese architecture.

See all schools »
See all buildings in Lisbon »

Photographs are by Invisible Gentleman.

Here’s some more information from the architects:

CVDB Arquitectos
Secondary School ES/EB3 Braamcamp Freire
Lisboa, Portugal

The Braamcamp Freire Secondary School is located at the edge of the historical centre of Pontinha, Lisbon. The site has approximately 17,380 sq m and borders an accentuated topography. The school is part of Pontinha’s urban fabric with the exception of its north boundary which faces an unconstructed valley.

The School was originally built in 1986, with five standardised prefabricated pavilions – a central one with a single storey and four two storey pavilions. These pavilions were organised along an east-west axis, connected by covered walkways. The existing school included a gym as well as an outside playground at a lower level and very disconnected from the buildings.

The rehabilitation project of the building was part of the Portuguese “Modernisation of Secondary Schools Programme”, which has been implemented by the Parque Escolar E.P.E. since 2007. The Programme’s objective is to reorganise schools spaces, to articulate their different functional areas and to open these schools to their local communities.

The project proposes to restructure the dispersed pavilion typology into one single building, to connect all the pavilions through interior circulation spaces. The new buildings are built to work as a link in between the existing pavilions.

The programme is structured as a learning street and a continuous path throughout the various building levels and floors. These pathways consist in a succession of several interior spaces, offering different informal learning opportunities. The learning street therefore articulates the various programmes of the school. The pathways are punctuated with social areas which actively contribute to interactions between students, the various educational programmes and the school community.

The school is structured around a central open space, a “learning square” that expands the “learning street” as an outside social central space of the school. The square’s relationship with the playground areas provides a strong relationship with the existing natural landscape and topography. The Square is open as an amphitheater connecting it to the playgrounds in the northern part of the school grounds.

This amphitheater is below the new classrooms building supported by a series of punctured concrete walls allowing students either to walk through them or to use them as places to sit, talking and playing. The facades of the school are essentially constituted in exposed in situ concrete and prefabricated concrete elements, to minimize maintenance costs. The concrete panels were carefully designed to respond adequately to each façade’s solar orientation.

In the interior spaces, adequate resistant materials were chosen for an intensive use and very low maintenance costs. The multipurpose hall has timber studs and acoustic panels. The circulation spaces walls are mainly done with concrete acoustic blocks. The social spaces present themselves as niches in bright colours.

Project: ES / EB3 Braamcamp Freire
Location: Pontinha, Lisboa, Portugal
Client: Parque Escolar, EPE
Total built area: 15,800 m2
Project and construction period: 2010 – 2012

Above: ground floor plan – click for larger image

Design Team: CVDB Arquitectos
Cristina Veríssimo, Diogo Burnay, Tiago Santos, João Falcão, Rodolfo Reis, Joana Barrelas, Adam Pelissero, André Barbosa, , Ângelo Branquinho, Ari Nieto, Guilherme Bivar, Hugo Nascimento, Inês Carrapiço, Irune Ardanza, José Maria Lavena, Leonor Vaz Pinto, Luigi Martinelli, Miguel Travesso, Silvia Amaral, Silvia Maggi

Above: upper floor plan – click for larger image

Landscape design: F&C Arquitectura Paisagista
Structure, foundations and services: AFA Consult

Above: section – click for larger image 

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by CVDB Arquitectos appeared first on Dezeen.