Lagos, Portugal
Portuguese architectural studio Mario Martins and local landscape architects F|C Arquitectura Paisagista join forces and design a unique private residence where contemporary architecture and elements from the past meet to create an impressive villa.
A new building appears behind a really massive, powerful wall that is more than a meter thick, guarding the memories of successive occupations and that now plays the role facing onto the street.
The project has been awarded a 2021 International Architecture Award by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.
The wall provides ancestral tranquility for the patio house, a common design in the surrounding area because of the long Moorish occupation.
In a more reserved area, there are four bedrooms that open onto the garden.
A central patio is a pivotal point for the entrances, a source of natural light, and mainly a privileged zone for socializing outdoors.
The way that was found to show the wall’s character was through the contrasting lightness of the house, which hides and seeks shelter through the force of the wall.
Therefore, large glass walls provide a tenuous frontier between the inside of the house and the garden patio, because all of this is the house.
There are four bedrooms, a large lounge, and a kitchen, but there are also small, discreet patios and a large garden patio arranged around the pool.
The bare concrete covers the few remaining walls to stress the sobriety of the building and articulate it with the grey finishes, as the stone of the pavements and the plaster coat of the ceilings.
The rest is urban landscape, built over years and years of history in which this intervention will just be a mere passage.
If it managed to add anything positive it is because the architecture is fulfilling its role.
Project: Casa das Freiras
Architects: Mário Martins Atelier de Arquitetura Lda.
Design Team: Mário Martins, André Coutinho, Mariana Franco, Rita Rocha, Sónia Fialho, José Furtado, Gonçalo Guimarães, So Yeon Lim, Thais Bressiani, and Helder Lima
Landscape Architects: F|C Arquitectura Paisagista
Client: Private
General Contractor: Marques Antunes Engenharia, Lda.
Photographer: Fernando Guerra/FG+SG
