Modern Holiday Home | House in Possanco | Comporta | Alcácer do Sal | Portugal | ARX

The owners wanted a small vacation house that allowed a casual and relaxed enjoyment of their weekend when escaping the urban everyday stress.

Our minds were for so long populated by images of the so-called popular architecture, produced before the technological era. They are small houses with sometimes asymmetric roofs, with one of the two garrets longer, almost disproportionate, reinforcing the compact aspect of volumes very much committed to the land where they are built.

These long roofs make the houses cosy during the extremely hot summers and yet sober in the winter. The presence of these houses on the Alentejo plains, allied to the whiteness of their lime painting bringing out an almost abstract figure, compose portraits of a singular and surprising beauty.........more

Modern Single Family House Design | House in Romeirão | Portugal | ARX

The site has a strong rural character, with small plantations, orchards and pathways limited by roughly made stone property walls and, once in a while, houses, scattered in the landscape.

It is a steep slope facing south over the valley, furrowed by a small river and a mountain in the background. While the upper half of the site is ramped, the lower is built in steps. In the transition between both two clear references became the starting point for the project: a walnut tree and a watering tank.

The first site visits immediately suggested a volume lying on the slope, facing the entrance walkway and sheltering the house from the neighbours while opening the interior views to the southern valley.............more

Modern Single Family House | House in Grândola | Portugal | ARX

The house deals with the surroundings with both a circumstantial "mistrust" and a circumstantial "empathy". From the traditional Alentejo architecture, besides the solid white volume, it retains only some traces or topics. If weight and tectonic sense impose themselves, lightness and delicateness disappear. In the interior one finds the patio, an "absent" cube, both exterior and the centre of the house.

Unexpectedly, one finds light, warmth, comfort, privacy, space and the transparency that the small and opaque outside volume seems to hide.....more

House in Martinhal | Portugal | ARX

House in Martinhal
This house is located in Sagres (Algarve), the furthest southwest location in Portugal.
This town hosted the Navigation School behind the “Portuguese Discoveries”, established in the 15th century by the infant D. Henrique.
Five centuries have gone by and nowadays these waters are famous for windsurfing.
Land is being split in generic parcels of typical resorts, claiming for a superficial architectural idea of a “portuguese house”, to please and sell to foreign tourists. The house was developed along the precise regulations, defined in the urbanistic project, from distances to borders, access and total amount of construction area and volume.
The highest and longest volume is located in the north to create an protect a central marble patio from the strong and permanent winds. An “L” shaped bedroom wing helps creating privacy from the acess road into the pool. Inside and outside spaces are always articulated by courtyards, a typology from the moorish legacy, while filtering views to selected fragments of untouched landscape.
The house is white and the roofs are flat, as they where often built in traditional architecture in this area, for drying fruits an fish, leaving us a particular architectural heritage that turistic resorts seem to have forgoten.

Address
Martinhal
Portugal

Project
2002-03

Construction
2005-07

Architecture
ARX PORTUGAL, Arquitectos Lda
Nuno Mateus
José Mateus

Structure Engineering
SAFRE, Projectos e Estudos de Engenharia Lda

Area
320m2