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House in Largo do Pelourinho, Estremoz

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In the heart of the Alto Alentejo region stands Estremoz, a city that magnificently preserves the time that has passed and expresses, like no other, the specific nature of the plains that have already been contorted by the ‘abrupt but always modest curtains of the mountains that add to its own beauty the note of unexpectedness and to the sensation of flatness, the instrument of contrast’1.

Formed by the hill of the thirteenth-century castle – where Queen Isabel of Portugal died after a life that is said to have been holy – the city spreads far into the lowlands, structuring itself around wide public spaces that punctuate and add meaning to each section and around which distinct properties are revealed – always in white and always flanked by marble of the same colour, which defines its edges with precision and nobility.

In this context, in a sixteenth-century part of the city, at the base of the hill that leads to the citadel, stands a building with a narrow front, three stories high, that hides an oblong plot, very narrow and long, which runs through the inside of the block, crossing it entirely.

Behing the rigorously designed facade, we aimed at establishing an unexpected palace - a sequence of rooms and spaces, places for entertaining, whose generous proportions are opposed to the slender circumstances. Seclusion was also sought - a paradise, an enchanted place with a long narrative redeeming the promises that time eroded: mystery, surprise and beauty.

In short, we tried to correspond to the imagined spirit of the ennobled house, which suggests the sum of time and a timeless architecture, widely varied and endowed with pleasant places. We also intended to belong to the place, to the inclement sun that suggests shade and water in the search for freshness and placidity. The garden, the epilogue of delight, is placed in-between the white lime and the marble stone, that here springs from the ground.

A succession of spaces is thus formed, interspersed with patios, gardens and terraces - a tactile Mediterranean place where the sun enters intentionally, where the breeze is fragrant and the rain is reviving - a place that allows one to touch the rhythm of the seasons, in a frank and kind relationship between man and the elements. 

 

1 Paraphrased from AA.VV. Popular Architecture in Portugal, 3rd volume. Association of Portuguese Architects, 3rd edition. Lisbon, 1998, p.03

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architecture

Pedro Matos Gameiro, Raquel Batista Pereira

design team

Raquel Batista Pereira, Mariana Bacelar, Beatriz Rodrigues, Rita Figueiredo

landscape architecture

Raquel Batista Pereira, Pedro Matos Gameiro

structural engineer

João Paulo Cardoso (PRPC engenheiros)

project year

2023-...

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