Completed Houses

A concrete structure for three adjoining houses had stood abandoned for almost twenty years; its original design, a pastiche of vernacular clichés, was never built. The Portuguese design team accepted the given outline and the skeleton, and found a way to read its limited qualities.

Inside, the three identical houses place public rooms on the ground floor by the garden and private rooms above facing the views. A continuous living room crosses the building, showing the tension between old structure and new white walls, over a patterned floor with a rich marble fireplace. Outside, an even grid of identical openings on a white background replaces the fragmented original design.