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Architects: fala
- Area: 240 m²
- Year: 2020
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Photographs:Francisco Ascensão, Giulietta Margot
Text description provided by the architects. The house has more levels and windows than a typical house in similar circumstances normally would. From an outside perspective, the house is both much bigger and much smaller than what would be expected. The rigid rhythm of small openings meets an ordered interior, where living spaces unfold left and right from the central staircase. Inside, a system of split levels is disguised between the slab thicknesses that disappear between the windows. Within the outer perimeter, none of the walls remain opaque; instead, a sequence of transversal glass brick walls on every level divides the spaces while still allowing a blurry glimpse from one to the next. On the top floor, the main spaces find themselves nestled under a vaulted ceiling—the only exception within the otherwise strict system.
The façade grid, the plan structure, and the overall spatial system are dependent on each other, like a parametrical device. Each element in the system is universal and repeated countless times, be it a wall, a door, a window, or a handrail. The metrics of the different materials (20x20cm glass brick, 30x30cm marble tiles, etc) contribute to the maniac set of rules that render each room identical and establish uniform relations between programs and the inside-outside transitions. Every decision that followed, practical, ethical, or aesthetic, and even the inhabitation that occurs today, results and contributes to this abstract yet very tangible reality.
The house is an applied theorem. Its “houseness” is not easy to grasp, forcing the inhabitant to find it and even force it in the construction that resulted from the set of predetermined rules that composed the project. The project is closer to being a mathematical equation in physical form than a house.
