Between the vineyards and the Atlantic - Housing complex
The place of contact between the ex-Monastery fence and Quinta do Marquês is mediated by thick eighteenth-century walls, and the landscape image builds in us the perception of living among the vineyards that have always characterized the Lisbon region, and the mouth of the river Tagus, where it surrenders to the Ocean. Perhaps that is why the morning breezes bring us the humid and maritime smell that floods the vineyards and houses, transporting these places, already far from the coast, for the close view we have of the sea.
Inside, the dwellings relate to the different quadrants, solar incidences, light temperatures and views, benefiting from the Tagus basin area, from the vineyards nearby, feeling the complex encounters with the Atlantic that characterize the territory. In the proposal of contemporary living, the transversality of the house, in its reduction of closing elements, both structural and spatial, allows spatiality to gain prominence, supporting the flexibility of experiences and, thus, the unpredictability of life.
The plot in which this set of three buildings is to be implanted, articulated among them, completing the pre-existing alignments, and looking at the immediate and distant landscape, corresponds to the highest point of the urbanized slope. Designed with a horizontal floor, which artificially extends the upper elevation of the land, and generates lower occupancy for parking, receives the three floating bodies that barely touch it. This floor does not deceive: the surface receives the flows and movements that cross it, access its entrances, spread out on the grassy surface, look for the cool shadows of the tall walnut trees or of the the apple trees on the small hill. Its highest angles bend in a staircase that reaches the sidewalk, or cover the entrance to the cafe on the upper platform. Its level is close to the existing land platforms that structure the adjoining gardens, further integrating this base space in the central sequence, open to the sea.
A public housing and residence program for students of this size constitutes a unique opportunity to reestablish an architectural and urban logic of direct relationship with the territory and the landscape in which it is inserted, promoting a continuity of the landscape on the one hand, and public encounter, on another. The contemporaneity of this gesture may renew the lost past and promote a significant future.
Location: Carcavelos, Portugal | Area: 19.038 m2 | Architecture: João Carmo Simões with Vega Solaz Soler and Marta Tornelli | Landscape Architecture: João Gomes da Silva (Global) | Structure: Eng. António Adão da Fonseca (ADF Consulting Engineers) | Climatization HVAC + Thermal Envelope + Natural Ventilation : Eng. Raul Bessa (GET) | SCI + ITED: Eng. António Romano (Sincrono)
