House in Peniche

The starting point was an existing two-floor house, built as a studio – the owner is a painter – next to which there were still two small appendix buildings. Although its recent edification, the house held a vaguely "popular" architectonic language, its making was somewhat rough and it was, as a whole, problematic to inhabit, all due to previous building options. They formed a compound of unconnected fractions, lacking group quality or any individual architectonic relevance that could motive its maintenance.

The owner intended to keep the house, recover it so as to make it comfortable and yet to enlarge it, so that it would become both a studio and a permanent family-house.

We interpreted that we should engage on the double task of bringing some character to the different parts of the house, as well as clarifying the set. In this way, we aimed at redesigning those parts, cleaning them of the fake lexicon, so that the result would be a clearer idea of assemblage.

The roof and porch of the main building were removed, the windows and doors redesigned – even though maintaining a good deal of their original locations – and a new body was built, to the north, forming with the already existing areas a patio protected from the local strong winds.

In the final set there is now a strong level of global abstraction, of volumes that add and articulate on a simple geometry. The history of the constructions has been inverted: the smaller buildings are now autonomous suggestions of "detached" parts of the bigger volume.

Locations

Peniche

Project

1998

Construction

1999 - 2000

Architecture

ARX PORTUGAL, Arquitectos Lda.
José Mateus
Nuno Mateus

Work Team

Paulo Rocha, Stefano Riva
João Góis

Photography

Daniel Malhão

Area

610 sqm