ALTO HOUSE
part of nature

Inspired in formal elements that caracterizes the place, such as the hold beach huts, used in the ceiling of the house, the caracter of Praia das Maçãs, the ceiling of memory, known as the giant huts that covers our heads in beach days.

The identity of the place - GENIUS LOCI - transmit the cultural values, by the multiplicity of square module, inside and outside interact directly without being strictly defined. The chromatic nature of the wall material, a stone that camouflage the soil into the walls, performing the morphology of the trees skin.

The vertices pocket windows, glass against glass, in the middle of the pine forest, appears to be the space in-between trees. The space is intersected by the landscape.
The materials of nature, points of view that we see when we are in a forest run.

With this organic way of conquered the field, the pine forest, we can’t understand not the starting nor the ending point. It’s Part of Nature.

The squared pattern that protects the windows, filters the light creating a certain estereotomy in the pavement // the windows occupy the vertices of the house. In this terms, the notion of window is doubled in two plans, where the touching point is nature. The vertices that normally close the house keep it open - in a transparent touch.

On light, the shutters perform a mimetic movement from the light getting in from the brief openings between leafs, letting the shadow craved in pavement stereotomy like the treetop capacity mediate light.
This is a project finished by nature. 

Through platforms that emerge from nature, the house is a synthesis of its geographical terms.
A forest beach. A Utopian Forest Beach.

Location
Sintra, Portugal

Year
1990-1992

Team
Tiago Araújo

Landscaping
Francisco Caldeira Cabral

Photography
FG+SG

Text
Francisca Abrantes da Fonseca