Located in the town of Carreço, Viana do Castelo, architect Nuno Grande + Pedro Gadanho has designed a modern home architecture with uniquely chosen exterior paint color. For such a modern house design, the architect prefered to use orange rather than black (or white).
The design adapts the program to a narrow and long plot, with a smooth slope, over the Atlantic shore. Minimizing landscape impacts, and skipping the legal setback, the main volume “moulds” itself to the site’s topography through the cantilevered extension of the upper floors. One of these projections, with near 8 meters, configures a balcony-terrace outside, hovering and opening onto the garden and the surrounding landscape. This imparts a horizontal “sliding” effect to the volumes, allowing a “de-materialization” of the house’s verticality. On the “skin” of the building it is thus possible to understand the presence of the circulations and services that embrace, on the different floors, the central core and its structural “skeleton”.
The construction method inverts a common situation. Inside, the white architectural concrete’ stereotomy denounces the walls-beams that support the central core and extend the living room in the suspended balcony. Outside, the different plans are clad by cappotto and the alternation of colours is highlighted by the expressive game of volumes. Finally, different openings framed by wood windows remind us of the unavoidable presence of the sea.
Via. Photography by FG+SG Fernando Guerra + Sérgio Guerra
