Studio Aires Mateus and SIA Arquitectura Studio joined together to design and built this country house in Melides, Portugal. The landscape is breathtaking: the house is set on the top of the hills and looks out to the Atlantic Sea. The plan is opened towards the sorroundings in a way that recalls La Rotonda by Andrea Palladio, though here the classic symmetry has left place to a contemporary distortion of space and volumes that plays with our perception of the actual size of the four blocks of the house. The interior develops around a central terrace, a typycal Mediterrenean feature, connected to all the rooms: a void as the core of the space. Everything inside is white; the blue of the water and the sky, the green of the vegetation, are the only two colours allowed to "enter" the space. The result is a tranquil, meditative space where mind and people can rest.
Photographer: Fernando Guerra
Via Yatzer
