[ Ezzo ] Outeiro House

Architects: Ezzo - Cesar Machado Moreira
Location: Oporto, Portugal
Design Team: Fátima Barroso
Project year: 2005-2006
Client: Marta Mello Sampayo
Structural Engineering: Eng.Lopes de Oliveira
Services: Oval Engenharia
Photographs: Joao Ferrand

The earliest records of the construction of the house at Outeiro Street date back to the last 19th century where the road to Romanticsm started.

Built using granite masonry and wooden structure, the building has undergone several modifications and tenures over the years.

At the start of the project, the main façade and the interior wooden beams were the only original elements remaining. The object of this project is the building, three meters wide by seventeen meters long, on four uneven floors, thus taking up the entire plot of land, It was decided that all of the existing structural elements would be maintained and, from there, a new interior would be built, by making use of the imaginary platforms and assigning a function to each level.

The entrance takes up all of the ground floor, the bedroom is on the first floor, and the bathroom and laundry room are located in between floors.

The second floor is made up of the living room, kitchen and dining room leaving the office and terrace to be found on the top floor. The purpose of this distribution was to support the connection between the house’s social areas and scenery, in a gesture to the hill where it is located.

To connect these spaces, the staircase on the ground floor was hidden in such a way as not to reveal the house’s interior; from the first floor to the top floor, the new vertical access points were realized using straight-line stairs.

Another important aspect of the project was the distinct nature that each area possesses; thes stand out not only because of their different views, but also because of the various textures and colors that have been selected. On the ground floor, a coarse-sand plaster was used, along with the same brown color used for the exterior, so as to create an intimate ambiance that is evocative of the shelter provided by a cave. The stairwell, in brilliant white, leads into the house, two pink panels pop up along the way, hiding the guest bathroom and the storeroom from sight.

from  archdaily