The five facets are addressed as a gang of elevations. each has a character of its own but they share apparent similarities. A grid of black dots attempts to make sense of the concrete structures and defines the figure of the facades.

Reoccurring pairs of windows, yellow doors, green shutters and surfaces of glass brick correspond to intricate rooms, devise tense compositions and charismatic personas. the former warehouse is a house of many faces.

Text provided by the architects.

At the rear, a staircase running parallel to the party wall was all that remained from the original structure. Aside from it, only the stone walls and a timber frame — floor and roof — existed, both in relatively good condition. The staircase was fragile, yet its odd placement served as a cue. Because it was precarious, it was replaced. The other elements were kept and revalued through the new design. The existing timbers were painted, allowing for maintenance with subtle replacements and ensuring a continuous reading across the space. Very little was added. On the lower level, a few light partition walls outline the new rooms, each of similar size. Above, a compact infrastructural core conceals the home’s technical utilities. The existing roof truss now rests on a new, robust timber beam, enabling the opening of a high-set window overlooking the garden. A light wooden terrace ensures a seamless connection between spaces.

The execution drawings were minimal. The spatial arrangement was preserved, but the slow and close collaboration with the builders allowed for a series of improvised moments that would have never been foreseeable in the original design. Outside, one finds an exposed cork façade, three octagonal concrete columns poured using salvaged formwork, a concrete water tank, and a mirrored wall reflecting the beautiful garden designed with pomo landscapes. Like the project itself, the house is pragmatic and honest. A kind of primitive urban hut, conceived as a holiday home yet meant to be lived in all year round.

Text provided by the architects.

On one side three steps separate us from the bedroom corridor, where the long bench and the relics scattered across the walls set a quiet mood. On the opposite end, a door hides a large open space divided in two levels mediated by a long wooden cabinet, an ambiguous limit that contains the spaces whilst also letting them flow. The fresh plaster hides the new infrastructure and covers the pre-existing openings, creating a strong contrast with the intense stone texture of the ancient walls, making both the scars and the new intervention even more visible. In the upper level, the living room, punctuated by the fireplace is overtaken by the framed landscape, as it leans over the dining room and the kitchen.

Next to it, a wide terrace looks over the landscape and the concrete stairs lead us down the hill inviting us to take a closer look. In this lower semi buried level, three individual accesses lead us to the workshop, the multipurpose room and the technical area.

Whilst the South and West facades mediate a more contained relation with the street and the village, the exposed openings to the North create a subtle dialogue with the view and the land. Along the white calid walls the openings shape an order built upon arrythmias, following premises of experimentation and plasticity, setting the score to which we can hear and experiment this house.

Text provided by the architect.

The architectural proposal morphologically translates this dialectic between the original pre-existence state in which the buildings were found and preserved, and the new infrastructural and functional components that were added for their renewed functionality. Over time, the construction’s proximity to the ring road and the railway line and the new presence of the TIC building removed its original meaning, and it did not seem logical to remake a conventional pastiche of it, given that its function has also radically changed. It would be better to give the building a new functional and urban meaning, without losing its essence and stony condition.

A commitment was made to a highly sustainable reconstruction (without the use of heavy construction elements, concrete, minerals or ceramics) through very light and recyclable structural elements, namely wooden structures and light metal components. These do not jeopardize the structural safety of the existing building whose interior and exterior appearance reveal the nature and contemporaneity of the intervention, and it does so without renouncing to the memory of its original morphology, whose interpretation is maintained.

The building now resurfaces with a renewed scale and appearance, a prominent figure in the green mantle that extends throughout the naturalistic intervention of the TIC park. The abstraction and neutral treatment of the roofs and new equipment highlights and gives prominence to the only old elements that have been fully preserved over time: the stone walls of the building. The chapel, given its spatial potential and symbolic dimension, was transformed into a small auditorium, entirely lit from above through a glazed roof, which confers a charismatic monumentality to the space.

Text provided by the architect.

Our proposal was to dismantle and reassemble the existing stone ruin, offsetting two walls for the required extra space. In the ecological spirit it presupposed, roof and slab structures ought to be built in wood and thermal insulation with cork panels. Like everything else, new wooden frames were to be custom designed.

The long time of architecture forced this project to survive a pandemic, an obstruction of the Suez Canal and several wars, which once again revealed the cyclical nature of capitalism’s crisis in a new inflationary spiral. Combined with the current shortage of skilled construction labour in Portugal, its original design became impossible. We were forced to redesign the house according to the technical and material limitations of a local contractor. As an outcome, design became a collective achievement. From our original proposal, form stayed but construction turned into the cheapest conceivable: concrete pillars and beams, ordinary concrete blocks, water-resistant MDF and little else, all merely coated with a thin layer of paint or varnish. Produced to remain hidden, all of these materials were here used “as found” and “as is”, in the spirit of Alison & Peter Smithson or Kazunari Sakamoto. New aluminum frames (including standard handles) were chosen from a catalogue, only to be subverted by a vivid color. All the original stones of the house were reused to build new retaining walls.

Thereby, drawings illustrating this publication reflect not our original design, but its new life: as-built and somewhat “designed” by others. This inverts meaning and allows one to learn from the compositional sense of an otherwise ordinary construction. Richness of space resulted from this economy, translated into a maximization of the minimal gesture. “Less is enough,” wrote Aureli. Truth be told, when facing macroscopic socio-political issues such as economy and ecology, contemporary architecture can do little more than contribute to the most generous definition of this minimum.

Text provided by the architect.