Raulino Silva Arquitecto . photos: © José Campos
The small house dated 1936 was built by my grandparents, in the place of Santagões, in a very rural area of Vila do Conde, where I am from. The architecture studio operated for ten years in the original house, practically as my grandmother had left it after her departure.
The recent intervention made it possible to enlarge the spaces and improve the existing building, trying to leave intact everything that’s possible, without reproducing or imitating the old, to avoid fake old things.
The very rocky site only made it possible to extend the upper floor towards the back, which is leveled with the courtyard. On the lower floor, at the street level, the garage and the new technical area were placed. On the upper floor, an atrium was designed next to an existing oven that connects the old house to the new construction, and defines the entrance to the studio. The atrium allows access to the two bathrooms, the tall room used for meetings and the smaller room used as a break room, both of which open onto the garden, where the original well, the granite stone walls and trees were kept.
In the existing construction, the wooden structure of the roof was preserved and was left exposed to make it possible to increase the height of the spaces. In the old kitchen area, the oven, the open wood fire chimney, the granite stone walls and the exposed wooden partition remained. In the main room, with wooden floor, there are two large work tables and the smaller windows with shutters that allow you to control natural lighting. Only this space functions as the second floor, the other spaces are the ground floor, at garden level, and in those the floors are made of white marble.
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