…of the week! Leiria House
In the serie ‘…of the week!’ we explain what our motivations are why we are an architect, what we do and what is important to us. By showing these projects we want to put you in to our heads and try to let you see through our eyes. Every week we choose an object, material, design, or house of the week. What they all have in common is that they are related to living…
The first project we want to show to you is a house, an archetype of a house. This house is of an average proportion and the sellingpoint is the original way it is materialised. Actually, the only thing what we want to tell you is that a house does not have to be built with brick walls and and a tiled roof to be a house.
Project of the week; Leiria House by Aires Mateus!
The functions are banal: a house divided in private area with bedrooms, and social area with living-rooms. The private areas are at street level under the plot, around a central courtyard with rooms opening to private patios in a intimate environment. The living rooms are around a void, that collects light from above and gazes the castle at the city centre.
The house is a recognizable archetype emptied of its centre by the light designed by a three heighted courtyard that opens horizontally at the garden level. The bedroom courtyards, revealed in the garden, relate with this archetypal object providing different readings on its scale. Scale and volume are controlled in a chaotic context, with a clear identity that from its core relates with the historical legacy far away: the Leiria Castle.