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Architects: NOARQ
- Area: 490 m²
- Year: 2013
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Photographs:Arménio Teixeira
Text description provided by the architects. The request was adjust an old house, with 262.09 sqm, to the current standards of comfort for a 4 persons family and adequate it to the current building regulations. The old house emerges in the middle of a great mass of trees, as a landmark. The construction is divided in two floors. The ground-floor dedicated to service functions and garage, and the top floor exclusively dedicated to social divisions.
The project began without questioning the architectonical value of the pre-existence – maintain it was a demand. The proposal maintains the current volume, offering the services and the social spaces for the family. The extension develops itself in the direction of the slope (west), where it opens a hole for a central courtyard. Contained in the west top of the house – rooms area and its corridor – and the living room, the courtyard stitches both areas.
In the back of the house another courtyard solves the permanent difficult contact between the construction and the ground. The courtyard illuminates and ventilates the interior spaces. Connected to the house at the ground-floor level, nesting in the back of the hill, the garage is hidden under a vegetal roof top.The renovation is yielding a total gross area of 469.11 sqm. The landscape was the subject of major concern. The new emerges organically from the old. The building emerges as a root that groes and goes further through the ground as an anchor to life on earth.
The design proposal is based on the most important element of preexisting building - the roof – The project uses its strong profile expression to redesign the house itself and relate it with the strong topography. The house is raised on a structural system of walls, retaining walls and reinforced concrete slacks interspersed with faces in masonry. Interior floors have wood flooring in hard maple wood, except the service areas with natural stone floors. The garage and the storage floors are in epoxy and the exterior spaces are covered by wooden deck. The entire building is entirely covered with an ETCIS insulation system. The roof top is in zinc. The interior walls and ceilings are plastered and painted or plaster according to the spatial and functional requirements.
