Fala

Housing Abragão

Housing Abragão
© Ricardo Loureiro - Architectural Photography

housing abragão

Fala Atelier

ARCHITECTS
Fala Atelier

CONTRACTOR
Ruce

CLIENT
Private

PROJECT TEAM
Filipe Magalhães, Ana Luisa Soares, Ahmed Belkhodja, Julia Andreychenko, Rute Peixotom Lera Samovich, Paulo Sousa

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT
João Magalhães

STATUS
Private Commission, Built

LOCATION
Penafiel, Porto District, Portugal

TYPE
Residential › Private House


A former clothing factory was to be converted into a housing unit. The factory that looked like a house to ‘fit in its context’, idea of the original owner, was transformed into an apartment block that resembled a factory in an archetypical and existential innuendo.

Housing Abragão
© Ricardo Loureiro - Architectural Photography
Housing Abragão
© Ricardo Loureiro - Architectural Photography

Each of the three levels was to be comprised of two apartments where the extremely low budget imposed a ‘social housing standard’ construction. Nevertheless, the existing open plan granted very generous areas and panoramic views in each apartment, creating a spatial tension.

The geometry of the plan started from the existing alignment of columns.

The axis, off centred due to the different sizes of the machines that originally occupied the space, provided a grid; from that point, geometry ruled over the general arrangement.

Housing Abragão
© Ricardo Loureiro - Architectural Photography
Housing Abragão
© Ricardo Loureiro - Architectural Photography

Six square rooms, one of them divided in two triangular spaces, a curve, and a small kink. Rules, exceptions and unbalanced symmetries were imposed to achieve an order.

A sequence of equally distanced blue doors, the three concrete columns and the brutal background-color: rgba(177, 190, 179, 1)beam create a sense of continuity along the different apartments.

The facade is simple and ordered, following rules dictated by the plan. The white volume is stressed by an apparently regular grid of identical windows; the rain pipes are exuberantly employed.

Housing Abragão
© Ricardo Loureiro - Architectural Photography
Housing Abragão
© Ricardo Loureiro - Architectural Photography
Housing Abragão
© Ricardo Loureiro - Architectural Photography

The stale cornice, the roughness of the white texture, the repetition of the same opening and the domestic blue door marking the building’s entrance hold an architectural language.

The economy of means is just the counter part of the imposed rhetoric.


Housing Abragão
Housing Abragão


Housing Abragão

Housing Abragão


Housing Abragão
Housing Abragão

Fala
T +351 913 134612
Fala
Porto, Portugal