Project: Agrela House
Architects: spaceworkers
Location: Agrela, Portugal
Area: 3,928 sf
Photographs by: Fernando Guerra | FG+SG
Portuguese studio spaceworkers has completed the design of a new contemporary residence in the municipality of Agrela in Portugal. Similar to the Sambade House project they built in Penafiel, the Agrela House is built from exposed concrete taking on a contemporary cuboid look. On the inside, it has a minimalist styling in a bright color scheme making the most out of the natural light that makes it inside.
A house for books. This challenge started with a premise from the client: space for many books. Immediately, our imaginary guided us to the many classical renaissance libraries, with sliding stairs that reach the book mountain. That was the motto of the intervention: a high space capable of generate the composition and hierarchize interior spaces.
The idea was growing and the volumetric experience led to the functional differentiation of the interior spaces, crating a roof as a restless mass with different heights. The roof also figures itself in a fifth facade and influences the idealization of the other ones.
Suddenly we had created a dense, heavy, monolithic cover roof that needed to be subverted, giving an idea of levitating mass that is slightly lying on light wood and glass. The roof seems to crush the users, reminding them of their own scale as humans and the ancestral importance of the shelter.
The time – important architectural component – is also an essential agent of the composition. The built elements – specially in concrete – seek to register the passage of time through it formwork texture.
This formwork, similar to the roof variations, assumes ups and downs, protrusions and recesses, allowing it to keep the time with the representation of the shadows during the different hours of the day, giving also a dramatic appearance to the facades
As the time passes the textured concrete will naturally age and will be more integrated in the rural surroundings. The same will happen to the wood base, which the older it gets the more magnificence will become, enriching the house
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