盖拉之家丨葡萄牙丨aste arquitectura

Architects:aste arquitectura

Area:134m²

Year:2021

Photographs:José Campos

Author:Ana Isabel da Costa e Silva

Architects:Orlando Guimarães, Pedro Coutinho, Rute Castro Queirós

City:Vale de Cambra

Country:Portugal

Text description provided by the architects. The house, built in the early years of the 20th century, is located at the southern end of the land and composed of two levels, located at different levels, which follow the development of the street. The house, with two floors, although built with stone masonry, visible from the outside, presented several pathologies, with seriousness, due to the alteration carried out in the seventies, which aimed to increase the space of the house to the northwest, on the second floor.

In that intervention, reinforced concrete structures were introduced. On the ground floor, there was the mill and the space for keeping the animals. The first floor consisted of two bedrooms, a central living room, and a kitchen. The bathroom was located outside.

The outside was occupied by successive corrals, where the chickens and rabbits were kept. The intervention had two essential principles: cleaning and removing illegal constructions on the first floor of the house and improving living conditions inside the house, especially on the ground floor.

The roof structure has been repaired and maintained. Thermal conditions were improved by introducing a specific material for thermal insulation on the roof. In addition to the thermal improvement of the roof, with the aim of maintaining the visibility of the stone masonry from the outside, light walls were introduced on the inside that complete the entire perimeter of the building and allow for the placement of thermal insulation, from the inside, on the walls that confine the building. with the outside.

As for the organization of the program, there were significant changes. The entrance to the house is, now, on the ground floor, at street level. On this floor, there are two bedrooms with private bathrooms and access to the first floor.

On the first floor, alongside the living room and kitchen, there is a third bedroom with a bathroom that can be shared by the living spaces of the house. The wood was kept in the window frames, although the detail design was altered, thus improving its performance. The choice of color for the exterior wooden elements finds reason in the presence of color in the village's land and aims to break with the options in recent rehabilitations in the village.

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