Description

The concept for this house derives from the topography of the plot and its spectacular view of the coast and the sea. A rocky gap in a wooded slope inspired Eduardo Souto de Moura to design the house as an integral part of a terraced, and thus architecturally created piece of landscape architecture. The slope and the house blend together, though the outlines of the building do stand out because of the geometrical precision of the roof slab. Like a bridge over this little niche in the rock, the roof is a solid element, with glazing at both the front and the back creating a sense of transparency. Coastal scenery at the front and rocks behind form a backdrop for life inside the building, which unfolds in a simple, additive sequence of spaces.

Nature provides the actual ‘walls’ of the house. Sliding elements of identically scaled wooden windows open up the rooms to terraces in front of them, seeming like a changeable setting, especially as it is not pos­sible to discern how the spaces function from outside. The living room, main entrance and kitchen are next to each other, then come three bedrooms, bathrooms and ancillary rooms. The terrace and the area in front of it were planned in careful detail, which reduced the artificiality of the topographical intervention to a minimum. The local stone forms precisely crafted supporting walls as lateral screens, internal walls and terracing for the slope, mediating between the rough rock and the refined architecture, and signaling that the building sees itself as a friend of nature, indeed as part of it.

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Originally published in: Klaus-Peter Gast, Living Plans: New Concepts for Advanced Housing, Birkhäuser, 2005.