House in Estrela / Aires Mateus

Architects: Aires Mateus
Location: Lisboa, Portugal
Authors Team: Manuel Aires Mateus / Francisco Aires Mateus
Project Leaders: João Esteves, Inês Potes
Area: 792.0 m2
Project Year: 2017
Photographs: João Guimarães, Francesco Martello

Collaborators: Helga Constantino, Sara Calem
Interior Design: Maria Rebelo Pinto
Engineering: Safre
Constructor: Rosete Construções

Text description provided by the architects. The house is located on a ridge above the Lisbon estuary. It faces the Estrela Basilica on one side, and the river on the other. The house, with an extensive brief, requires the use of two circuits: one interior and the other exterior, alternating in order to facilitate the independence of the parents’ and their children’s lives. The house revives the form of a traditional streetfront house, in this case entirely in face concrete, both inside and outside. Thus, it opens up via the relationship between its constituent spaces.

Horizontal transparency connects the garden to the street on the same level as the living room. The master bedroom opens onto a double height space that frames of the views to the garden. The children’s bedroom level opens onto to a corridor on one side and a balcony on the other.

The top living room is a terrace that steers views through an opening produced by its intersection with a cylinder on the roof, defining the views on either side. The bowl-shaped pool on the terrace compresses the living room ceiling, organizing its space.