Brunhais House
BRUNHAIS HOUSE
Rui Vieira Oliveira
ARCHITECTS
Rui Vieira Oliveira
LOCATION
Brunhais, Portugal
CATEGORY
Houses
AREA
500 m²
YEAR
2016
PHOTOGRAPHS
Fernando Guerra | FG+SG
MANUFACTURERS
Saint-Gobain, Weber, Sanitana
Brunhais is a small village surrounded by mountains and a huge blue sky in the north of Portugal.
Immersed in a paradoxically rocky and verdant landscape, this house is part of a set of three projects belonging to three brothers.
The program was elementary, the project should host a couple and support the activity of the family´s company.
The slightly uneven terrain allowed the overlapping of two volumes.
These two volumes materialize the surroundings and marks these two different functions.
The white one for living and the gray one volume made of natural stone, a kind of laboratory.
The entrance is made through the void left by the upward movement of one of the sculpted planes.
This sculpted U-shaped volume allowed us to separate the private and social areas and create the traditional courtyard open to the sky and facing the sunset in the long summer nights.
Once used for agricultural activities this patio would now have a playful function.
When we perceive the final result we got the perception of having carved a piece of white stone that contrasts in a huge blue sky.
We wanted to create movement, dynamics. Imagine a rock that glides on another, this movement would create new spaces.
