BICA Arquitectos

Clara House

Clara House
© Fernando Guerra | FG+SG

CLARA HOUSE 

Inês Cortesão

ARCHITECTS
Inês Cortesão

AREA
108.0 m2

YEAR
2008

LOCATION
Portugal

CATEGORY
Houses

Text description provided by architect.

CLARA HOUSE

Embraced by the village, a stone house with two floors is found at the end of an alley.The intervention starts by removing all contents of the former inhabitants life experience there.

Clara House
© Fernando Guerra | FG+SG
Clara House
© Fernando Guerra | FG+SG

The base for this project is a stone box of gold granite, connected to a contiguous volume of plastered brick, where the kitchen and the bathroom were built.

The openings on the thick stone walls are filled by thin white frames, allowing the interior to show and giving a sense of lightness and balance to this pile of equipped stones.

Clara House
© Fernando Guerra | FG+SG
Clara House
© Fernando Guerra | FG+SG

On the ground floor, wide white doors close the house patio. The house’s roof in white straw tiles, that were determinant to complete the “bright” harmony of the ensemble, stands out from the surroundings and stages the snow days, moment of conceptual acclaim of the project.

On the contiguous volume the principles are reversed: the traditional construction with gable cover is replaced by a simple volume with pure forms and a flat roof all, in white.

Clara House
© Fernando Guerra | FG+SG
Clara House
© Fernando Guerra | FG+SG

The content of the stone box, stuccoed on the interior, is in chestnut wood.

On the first floor, a square plan room with a fireplace in the middle is where it’s possible to warm up the chilled body in the winter and socialize.

Clara House
© Fernando Guerra | FG+SG
Clara House
© Fernando Guerra | FG+SG

In a symmetric way, whether talking about the space organization or the furniture design and use, the rooms are distributed.

These walls hide the structure that supports the roof, the cabinets and the doors to the bedrooms.

Clara House
© Fernando Guerra | FG+SG
Clara House
© Fernando Guerra | FG+SG

The segregation between the living room and the bedrooms is made by wood walls that follow in a vertical direction the alignment of the floor boards, cut to size.

The design for these openings is matching, in a rigorously way, the scale and dimension of the “stone shell”, revealing several asymmetries and the house’s reduced human dimension.

Clara House
© Fernando Guerra | FG+SG
Clara House
© Fernando Guerra | FG+SG

This is an intervention that tries to, through principles and traditional construction processes, instill an image of contemporaneity, that makes this house an exception on the mountains landscape.


Clara House
© Fernando Guerra | FG+SG
Clara House
© Fernando Guerra | FG+SG
Clara House
© Fernando Guerra | FG+SG
Clara House
© Fernando Guerra | FG+SG
Clara House
© Fernando Guerra | FG+SG
Clara House
© Fernando Guerra | FG+SG


Clara House
Plan 01
Clara House
Plan 02


Clara House
Elevation 03
Clara House
© Fernando Guerra | FG+SG


Clara House
Section 01
Clara House
Section 02
Clara House
Section 03
Clara House
Section 04


Clara House
Diagram

BICA Arquitectos
T +351 213 423096 M +351 962 368321
BICA Arquitectos
R. Borges Carneiro 38 1ºEsq, 1200-619 Lisboa, Portugal