Fernando Pessoa (1888/1935) is considered to be one of Portugal’s greatest modernist writers. His major attribute was the invention of heteronyms, different creative personalities that he conceived, with their own personalities and backgrounds that became real through their writting. With the maturation of these characters, the personalities become confuse and we can no longer distinguish the nature of the original person. Through his life, Pessoa created dozens of heteronyms. The three most significant ones, because of the consistency and extent of their work were: Alberto Caeiro, Álvaro de Campos and Ricardo Reis.
This persistent simulation of the self comes from Pessoa´s desire of being someone different, capable of enjoying life instead of over-razionalising it. Caeiro is the representation of this, reason why he was nomaneted master. For the project, we´ve seeked an ambiance were Caeiro could have lived, surrounded by the nature he celebrates. In Terceira´s island, (Azores archipelago, Portugal) we´ve discovered these features. Pessoa travelled there frequently to visit relatives from his mother side. We can imagine that in one of these visits, he decided to stay. On the top of a hill he built the house Caeiro (or was it himself?) describes: overlooking the green fields, the village and the ocean in the distance.
To design a house for a poet that is at the same time several. A house in wich to read, to write and to think through four dinstinct realities. From the topography, we raise a stone wall that folds around itself to create a surrounded garden open to the sky. We make it thick enough to contain habitable spaces. Along this wall we distribute the dwellers. Their houses vary in dimensions, geometry and light according to their own personalities. Like a ruin embedded in the landscape, only light, stone and vegetation build the house that Pessoa inhabits with his imagination.