Portugese architecture firm Filipe Saraiva Arquitectos has completed a single family house on a sloped piece of farmland in Melroeira - Ourém, Portugal with tiny but selective landscape elements that demonstrate the house as a part of natural environment. The house is located on a piece of land in Ourém, characterized by its rectangular configuration, with a descending slope in the south direction (next to the public road). 

The difference in height between the highest point and the lowest point is approximately 4.50m. It is a farmland with a natural landscape, facing south and overlooking the Castle of Ourém.

Named House in Ourém, the design takes inspiration form unforgettable memories of a child who always draws the same shape for houses. 

"When we ask a child, anywhere in the world to draw a house, all of them invariably present us with a simplistic representation consisting of five lines, a rectangle and two squares," said Filipe Saraiva, founder of Filipe Saraiva Arquitectos.

"The pentagon composed by five lines represents the walls and the roof. The rectangle is meant to represent the door and the squares, the windows," he added.

Covering a total of 410-square-metre area, the project is developed based on the modular composition principle, creating a proper rhythm in the façades and roofing. 

"This archetype is usually defined by a polygon of regular geometric shape, generally well proportioned and with balanced dimensions, with which we all identify," added the architect. 

Filipe Saraiva Arquitectos used prefabricated black concrete panels as a constructive method with a regular dimension that defines the stereotomy of the project, since it is composed of repeated modules arranged sequentially. The use of black concrete as a material aims for a smooth integration in harmony with the landscape, as well as reduce maintenance costs.

"Regardless of the culture, the architectural references of each place, or the most common concept of accommodation from that place, it shows that all the houses have characteristics that are transversal to each one of us, because we all feel that the house is like a shelter that protects us from the world that surrounds us. It is our safe haven and our own world," explained the architect.

"The project consists of a house of me, for me and my family and intends to meet our functional needs, but also to satisfy a range of architectural requirements that are part of my formal and spatial imaginary, resulting from my individual and family experience."

"After the process of identifying the site and acquiring the land, the development of the project became a natural process where the pretensions and memories began to give meaning to the drawing. From then on, the drawing started to gain a consistent form," he added.

The form of the house has become the concept of this project with which the architect tried to be, throughout its development, the most coherent possible, trying not to distort from the principle. The pergola assumes the same design, as an extension from the house.

In formal terms, the house comes out a simple and perfectly regular volume, almost monolithic, that lands on the ground, in the longitudinal direction of its inclination, in an intermediate point overlooking the street.

Project facts

Project: Single Family Housing 

Promoter: Filipe Saraiva 

Location: Melroeira - Ourém 

Construction Area: 410m2 

Year of Project: 2015 

Year of Construction: 2016 

Architecture: Filipe Saraiva Arquitectos

Collaborators: Andreia Correia, Agnieszka Marques 

Specialties: Rui Santos, Equação Dupla 

Construction: Vigobloco 

3D Image: Sintoniametrica 

Models: Filipe Saraiva

All images © Joao Morgado - Architecture Photography

> via Filipe Saraiva Arquitectos