The «boxes» house is a rehabilitation of a ground floor house, with a contiguous garden, located in Largo de Carnide in Lisbon, Portugal. The project reinterprets the idea of patio-house, both the Mediterranean vernacular typology and the Mies van der Rohe’s modern conception, and the informal domesticity and constructive simplicity of the Case Study Houses, that we found developed by Inaki Abalos in the idea of the “pragmatist house” in his book “The Good Life”. On the other hand, the existing urban context, the specific configuration of the house, and the new program required, demanded a conceptual research of the complex and ambiguous relations between interior and exterior.
Initially we tried an approach closer to the recovery of the existing building. But the abandoned and degraded condition of the building and the pre-existing spatial organization – central longitudinal corridor, with public areas facing the square to the North, and private and service areas facing the garden to the South – demanded a more hands-on approach. Reversing the previous logic of the internal spaces, the project redefined the whole interior, intensifying the relationship with the garden and the best exposure. The project subtracts a courtyard in the existing building and adds a glass pavilion in the garden, with an usable roof, allowing a more extended and fluid disposition of the public areas of the house. With this we achieved a good natural light and spatial openness in the existing house and an open and transparent relationship between the new living room and the garden.
The functional organization is structured by the material boxes, that accommodate the private program, making the public space the negative of its placement in space. If, on the one hand, we developed a dynamic and flexible conception of space, through the use of mobile elements, on the other hand, we neutralized the transitional spaces between private and public areas – here reduced to the plane of the doors hidden in the boxes – stressing the sudden changes of environment through the differentiation of materials and the use of colour, somehow reminiscent of what we watched in The Cook, the thief, his wife and her lover by Peter Greenway.
CONTEXT
The project concerned a pre-existing ground floor house with an adjacent garden in a consolidated urban context in the outer limits of the city of Lisbon. Located in the historic area of Carnide, the plot is protected from the outside, both from the public square in the North, through the long main façade, and from the secondary street in the South, through a massive peripheral wall. Therefore, the plot configures itself as a private interior within the exterior public space.
PRE-EXISTENCE
The project adopted an affirmative perspective, reshaping all the interior of the degraded property, reversing the logic of the existing functional structure which had the public spaces opening to the square. The new public spaces of the house allow a strong relationship with the garden and the best exposure. However, the morphological logic of the pre-existence is reaffirmed with the preservation of the garden façade of the house. Thus, the interior of the existing house remains separated from the exterior of the garden.
PROPOSAL
The project subtly reconfigures and deconstructs the previous situation. We have subtracted a courtyard in the existing building and added a new pavilion in the garden, with an usable roof. Extending and fragmenting the public areas allowed not only an airy and luminous space in the existing house but also a clear and open relationship of the pavilion with the garden. If, in the existing house, the courtyard presents an interiorized exterior condition, in the garden the pavilion presents an exteriorized interior condition.
PROGRAM
The project was developed through the placing of several boxes, on a glass box for the courtyard and other matteric boxes for the private and service areas, making the public space the negative of its disposition in space. If, on the one hand, with the mobile elements we proposed a dynamic and flexible conception of space, on the other hand, we have suppressed the transitional spaces, which were reduced to the plan of the doors, hidden in the volumes. In this sense, public space can become an interior of the private spaces considered as exterior.
CONCEPT
The project explores the growing ambiguity and complexity of the contemporary relationship between interior and exterior. Like the Internet that functions through «Windows», navigating unpredictably from reality to reality, this house works through abrupt transitions from space to space. The project explores sudden environment changes through the differentiation of material and chromatic shock, something reminiscent of «the cook, the thief, his wife and her lover» by Peter Greenway. What is truly exterior or interior?