079 "suspended house" | fala atelier

In an artery connecting the city centre to its suburbs, where individual houses are being demolished daily to leave place for bigger housing developments, conceiving a new individual house is a delicate task. The façades of the project stemmed from a rough conjugation of both building types, sitting in a fragile ambiguity. A rational order, following the logic of the plans is superimposed with a set of seemingly inordinate elements: row windows, erratic marble frontons, seemingly arbitrary drainpipes and pink marble discs unbalancing the composition. The house is an exercise on uniqueness as much as it is an exercise on banality.

The interior follows similar policies. An off-centred column functions as hinge and divides each level into four equivalent quadrants. There are three levels and the street access is on the middle one. Fixed or flexible programs uniformly occupy these quadrants leaving the use to the user. The house is a static frame for the changing dynamics of life. Its central column is a condensing, symbolical element, a substratum of these dynamics. Its shape is arbitrary and exuberant, providing distinct perspectives to each room. A collection of blue doors interconnect different rooms and adorn the column like a superhero capes.

On the lower level, undivided and open to the garden, the column levitates a few centimetres from the ground. The floor under it is therefore easy to clean, and the fragility of the entire structure is revealed. A house is always a mental construction before being anything else.

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fala #079
"suspended house"

Location:
Porto, Portugal

Dates:
2017-20

Status:
private commission; built

Project team:
filipe magalhães
ana luisa soares
ahmed belkhodja
lera samovich
costanza favero
ana lima
joana sendas
paulo sousa

Surface area:
270m2

Photography:
fala
paulo catrica
laurian ghinitoiu
giulietta margot
frederico martinho
ivo tavares