Houses of Cards

The maximum buildable volume was a distorted two-storey box. Refusing the fragmentation around it, the Portuguese design team made five houses pretend to be one: an object poised between collective and private, a plural wedding cake.

A façade wraps around all four sides in vertical bands, alternating French windows and balconies with walls topped by triangular crowns and marble details, its clashing rhythms revealing the divisions inside.

The ground floor floats above a row of garage doors and holds living rooms running from the street-side bridge entrances to the gardens behind. Upstairs, bedrooms surround a core of bathrooms and circulation. In each house a lone column pins the two floors together beneath a roof opening that lights the core.