Portuguese architecture firm Bruno Armando Gomes Marques designed this contemporary style house in a picturesque part of Oliveira de Azemeis, Portugal. The home’s strong geometric presence complements the crisp, clean colors defining its stacked, multi volume structure. A dark, understated lower level seems to blend into the background while supporting a white upper volume, which appears to be floating from a distance. Large expanses of glass throughout afford the residents abundant daylight and views of the outdoors.
In fact, it seems as though this house was made to capture snapshots of its surroundings, with an upper level that purposely focuses every room in a different direction.
The slope house plan actually allows for two levels facing the south and three on the north. A staircase leads down into a sunken courtyard, where you enter the home through a front foyer and continue into the living and dining room, kitchen, bathroom and an office area.
Up one level, the home’s service areas – the laundry room, storage area and the garage. Further upstairs, the top level boasts bedrooms housed by these cantilevered volumes that seem to launch you right into the landscape, blurring the boundary between indoors and out.
The interiors have a modern, minimalist edge, which white walls illuminated by ever present natural light. Warm wood floors give the house a more livable, more “human” look and feel without losing its clean, crisp aesthetic.
Bruno Armando Gomes Marques
photo credit: Miguel Coelho
