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 Alzejur | Portugal By Ricardo Carvalho Joana Vilhena

The deployment of the house was conditioned by the duplicity of accessibility to the lot, which is configured by two public roads. The project seeks to exploit this situation to define the criteria for establishing access and privacy, all combined with an optimal solar exposure. Another of the conditions is the aggressiveness of prevailing winds. The elementary formal proposal seeks to reconcile all the points listed. The materials are based on an economy of means in accordance with the establishment of the assumptions listed above. The frame is made of reinforced concrete porch, with double panels of masonry, to cover the plain exterior, plastered and painted white.

Accesses to the lobby through a courtyard-channel, which runs through the whole house visually to hold an olive tree, again abroad. The program stipulated the functional separation of the house in two groups of rooms, spread over two floors, served by the same common area living room and kitchen. On the ground floor hinges, from the lobby, two bedrooms and a living room, which is also the space ladder (partly double right foot) to access the first floor. The main room, divided in two parts, is oriented to the east-west. On the first floor is accessed from a corridor, three bedrooms. Hence it comes to a shared terrace, facing south, protected from the winds, dominant on the valley and the salt.....more
Location: Alzejur

Project: 2000/2001

Work: 2001/2002

Architecture: Ricardo Carvalho Joana Vilhena

Team: Joana Vilhena, Ricardo Carvalho and Michael Meco

Client: Private

Photo © rcjvarquitectos

Casa Cesar Ferreira | Alcanena | Portugal | Goncalo Byrne Arquitectos

On a small hill on the edge of urban Alcanena, remnants of a floor, a flag of farming and a small grove of almond trees form a group to which it has access by a spiral ramp that circles the hill.
The project involves the recovery of those three elements, by deploying the new house in the center of them, in order to structure their new relationships. The project seeks to create a proper place of living featuring clearly and naturally the various facets of this dwelling, whether inside or outside. The articulation of the existing house with the shed allows you to create two separate outdoor areas, the north courtyard of service to the south another courtyard, organizes swimming pool, tennis court and garden, which is down from the grove. From a covered porch in the old barnyard, the divisions are ranked in the ground floor with some autonomy, around the room, double height, while low-level seek to extend outwards. The first floor rooms have been around for a small gallery that circles the room. The distribution system of their circulations form a mesh similar to the layout of urban organization, where the corridor serves as "street" and the room as "square". The shed holds, in essence, the characteristics of the original building, with minor adjustments to current uses.....more

House In Castro Verde | Portugal By Goncalo Byrne Arquitectos

Located on a gentle slope in Castro Verde, South-oriented, with a panoramic view of the undulating plain, the new house is structured so as to follow the contour lines. The various elements are arranged so as to relate different activities with the geography of the site, through a series of small terraces articulated with some existing tree masses and other pre-existing stocks to be restored.

The house consists of two main bodies articulated.

In one of the bodies, plant centered around a courtyard, meet the daytime activities and services.

The structure of these spaces is close to the Roman villas - ancestor of the remaining architecture of the hills of Alentejo - looking for guidance and open living spaces on the broader landscape near and far.

The wing of rooms is linked to the former body through an angle that results from setting the contours of the land.

This wing, together with the annexes of the pool, a way that protects the corner of North and West of the landscaped pool area.....more

Residence In Joane,Portugal | ZapGun

PROGRAM:Residence in Joane, PT
CLIENT: Josefina e Manuel Machado
STATUS: Built (2006)
ARCHITECTURE: ZapGun (2003)
STRUCTURE: Eng.ª Cidália Dionísio
MECHANICAL ENGINEER:
GET - Eng.º Raul Bessa
ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING:
Eng.ºAndré Rodrigues
GENERAL CONTRACTOR:
Aurbi - Imobiliária e Constr. Civil, Lda.

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