House for Three Sisters

Project Description

Long ago, in a beautiful Portuguese village, we saw a house in which threshold was read, „my dream.“
Will there be something more inspiring that the challenge of making a dream come true?

This project sought to fulfill the wishes shared by three sisters: a home integrated with the landscape and tradition of the area, respectful of the environment and full of nooks to enjoy themselves.

This haven is construed as three separate units; three sisters and their families, three houses with beautiful views and good orientation but with certain intimacy between them as well. Three houses standing together but not intermingled; a garden, an olive grove and a shared courtyard, a place for all their cousins, a place for all their friends.

The architectural aim for the home was for it to merge with the sorrounding landscape, a valley of vineyards and olive threes, clearly signaling an attitude more concerned with the contextual determinants than with itself through its confused geometry and a certain expectant materiality – an uninhibited architecture waiting for its transformation with the passing of time, for its façades to turn gray in the sun and bear witness to the marks of joyfull lived lives as they appear.

All in all, this rural architecture is designed to make use of ancestral knowledge and to update some traditional building solutions. This shared home strives to administer high doses of ethical and aesthetic coherence to offer Irene, Minuca and María Ángeles a place for relishing life.