House in Quinta da Moura
Description
Having finished another house, the client recommends our work to some friends: now a couple with three small children needs a permanent residence in the Lisbon area.
As in most cases we have worked on, when partitioning land lots in our suburban country, urban planning rules are more or less universal and standard: you build the house in the middle with a free strip around it (mandatory distances).
This particular land lot, of nearly 800 m2, is topographically located in a hole, from where there aren’t any particularly interesting visual perspectives. It is in the visual range of a shortcut road accessing Lisbon’s daily routine and, therefore, very much prone to exposition.
Right from the start, we went looking for the house’s privacy, and we decided to build the whole polygon.
We looked for views in two different heights: a low one, close to the garden and pool, and a high one, more abstract and distant, closer to the sky. The house itself builds part of the views, working as a filter and establishing new indoor/outdoor relationships.
We studied the possibility of excavating the inside of the building, bringing in a relationship with the outside space. The idea of indoors becomes ambiguous. We stretch the polygon to its limits, but most of it stays outside. There is a new interior in-out that re-centres and rules domestic life along its thick faceted transition skin.
The final volume, chewed on the inside, keeps its limit.
Every time we design a house, always another comes to mind. A memory of Siza Vieiras’s Beires House, from the 70’s, keeps coming back to mind.
Datasheet
Oeiras, Portugal
350 m2
ARX Portugal, Arquitectos lda.
José Mateus
Nuno Mateus
Alexandra Margaça
Structures
SAFRE, Projectos e Estudos de Engenharia Lda.
