Casa na Gateira in Penela, Portugal Residential Building, Portuguese Architecture Photography
Casa na Gateira in Penela
Contemporary Portuguese House in the Coimbra District design by Camarim Arquitectos
9 Mar 2016
Design: Camarim Arquitectos
Location: Gateira, Penela, Coimbra District, central Portugal
Casa na Gateira
Photos by Nelson Garrido
Casa na Gateira
Gateira is a hamlet placed on a beautiful hill planted with vineyards, pines and olive trees with splendid views over the southern tip of Serra da Estrela, the highest point in mainland Portugal.
The clients – a British couple – wanted a second home to give them space, open air and silence, in contrast to their life in London. The first question: how to design on such a dramatic landscape, with an unusual balance between nature, agriculture and traditional architecture? Our strategy was to interfere as little as possible: one enters the house in the upper part of the plot, through a wall that evokes the region’s traditional slate buildings, and descends onto the house’s core – a social space split in 2 levels.
From this space, the house’s volume breaks and extends along the topography in a subtle yet effective separation between social and intimate i.e. every space sits on a different level and has direct access to the outside. We may say that instead of a house in the landscape we thought of a house from the landscape, as though building a walk in the countryside.
Beyond the romantic notion of a well-grounded house, extensive contact with the ground gives enormous energy benefits: we use the earth’s endless thermal mass to balance air thermal amplitudes throughout the day and seasons. The patio between the living room and the master bedroom is also a passive thermal device: it creates a thermal differential between the swimming pool and the patio, which generates an ascending air flow across the house for cooling in spring and summer, and it allows intensive insulation of the most innermost point in the house in autumn and winter.
Casa na Gateira, Penela – Building Information
Project Name: Casa na Gateira
Project Location: Gateira, Penela, Portugal
Site Area: 2143 sqm
Built Area: 403 sqm
Project Completion: 2014
Project by: Camarim
Project Architects: Vasco Correia, Patrícia Sousa
Collaborators: Tiago Garrido, Jonas Grinevicius, Christoph Schwander
Structure: reinforced concrete
Exterior Finishings: terrace and roof – polished screed; walls – schist dry wall and microcement-finished ETICS; shutters – seasoned iroko wood
Interior Finishings: floors – polished screed; ceilings – structural concrete; walls – white plaster and cork
Project: Camarim
Photographs: Nelson Garrido
Casa na Gateira in Penela information received 090316 from Camarim Arquitectos
Location: Gateira, Penela, Portugal, southwestern Europe
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