Lisbon-based studio SIA Arquitectura has completed Casa da Encosta n Grândola, Portugal, which has a series of lime-rendered volumes wrapped around a central courtyard.
Encompassing a main home and four smaller, near-identical guesthouses, Casa da Encosta draws on traditional architecture of the region – with the studio opting for “ancient” materials such as wood and lime render.
“The design was inspired by the traditional architecture of this coastal region of Portugal, which is closely tied to basic local materials and techniques,” studio co-founder Ana Cravinho told Dezeen.
“We studied the scale of these buildings and drew inspiration from their often delicate and fragile nature, while being highly responsive to the territory and the people.”
To increase the home’s privacy, SIA Arquitectura organised the volumes at the site’s outer edge, surrounding a centralised garden, to act as a “protective wall”.
The main home, which sits at the raised end of the sloping site, is composed of two parallel volumes bridged together by a central, perpendicular volume that contains a spacious living area with large, sliding doors that open up to the garden.
A pitched wooden roof tops the central space and extends to shelter a portion of the two adjacent volumes, as well as shade an external patio.
In one of the adjacent volumes, two en-suite bedrooms are similarly lined with large openings that look out to a private courtyard space enclosed by lime-rendered walls, while the other volume hosts additional living, kitchen and storage space.
In keeping with the main house, the four smaller guest homes are each encased by a main external wall and divided internally by a central unit and wall that demarcates the living, bedroom and bathroom spaces. Shaded courtyards flank each of these four volumes.
A restricted material palette is used throughout the interior spaces, with wooden features and black accents contrasting the lime-rendered walls, and glazed tiles repeated across the wet spaces.
“We aimed to have a consistent materiality throughout to blur the boundaries between indoors and outdoors,” Cravinho said.
“Also we wanted to echo the sandy landscape typical of this area and create a seamless connection between the house and the land.”
SIA Arquitectura is an architecture studio based in Lisbon, Portugal, established in 2007 by Cravinho, Ines Cordovil and Sofia Pinto Basto.
Other homes recently completed in Portugal include a house with a large number of windows designed to give the illusion of extra height in Lisbon and a concrete home punctured with irregular openings near the town of Sobrado.
The photography is by Francisco Nogueira.
