EMBAIXADA
This project is the expansion of the existing winery of Herdade da Cardeira, located in Borba, in the centre of the interior of Portugal.
There were two pre-existing buildings on the site that coexisted on top of a natural hill that was deformed over time from earth movements of the older constructions.
The commission was to design a house and an office area to support the wine cellar activity.
The goal was to organise the requested program with all the work flows from the different uses, integrating the new and pre-existing constructions together with the landscape, contributing to a unified image of the property.
The strategy went through softening and moulding the topography, accommodating the program into new scattered constructions at different levels along the hill, in order to reinforce different needs of privacy for the different uses.
The constructions are made out of rammed earth from the site, afterwards covered by natural lime plaster on the inside but on the outside the colour was tuned to the orange of the earth, allowing the constructions to fade into the landscape. This option of construction, together with the cross ventilation through the windows and the pergolas with climbing greenery for shade, made the building more efficient along the hardest season of the year, summer.
Apart from being a scenario, integrated in the landscape through the garden that involves the constructions, the compound is like an old village where agriculture, commerce and dwelling share space define the property as a single entity.
_
