Casa das Freiras – Mário Martins Atelier
Casa das Freiras – Mário Martins Atelier
Casa das Freiras – Mário Martins Atelier – The house was built from scratch on the degraded space of a vehicle workshop. A new building appears behind a massive, powerful wall that is more than a meter thick, guarding the memories of successive occupations and that now plays the role of facing onto the street. The existing wall provides ancestral tranquillity for the patio house, a common design in the surrounding area because of the long Moorish occupation.
Casa das Freiras – Mário Martins Atelier – In a more reserved area, 4 bedrooms 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.
Casa das Freiras – Mário Martins Atelier – 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 an 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 Name: Casa das Freiras – Mário Martins Atelier
Studio: Mário Martins Atelier
INFO: FIRM PAGE
Studio Location: Lagos e Lisboa
Project year: 2020
Project Location: Lagos
Lead Architect: Mário Martins,arq.
Project Team: André Coutinho; Mariana Franco; Rita Rocha; Sónia Fialho; José Furtado; Gonçalo Guimarães; So Yeon Lim; Thais Bressiani; Helder Lima
Engineering: Nuno Grave Engenharia; Zona Térmica; HRF&SCL Soluções
Landscape: F|C Arquitectura Paisagista
Building: Marques Antunes Engenharia
Photography Credits: © Fernando Guerra / FG+SG