House in Oeiras is a family house designed by Pedro Domingos arquitectos as a continuous space that is developed around a patio and is designed as a place of retreat where space is thought to be inhabitated and allows you to think and work in it.
The house is built from an exemplary program. A retreat, a place to live, to think and to work that will house a library and a small collection of art. The implementation of the house responds to the adverse context, defined by the strong presence of a train line and by a set of uncharacteristic houses surrounding the lot.
The walled courtyard functions as the centre of the house, a sheltered and protected outer room. A space that convenes the atmosphere of the tradition of the Mediterranean patios, defining a place of intimacy, light and shadow. A clay ground surrounded by high walls of ochre in colour, where the presence of a water surface spices up the place. The house develops around a courtyard through a path, from the common areas to South/East, to the most private spaces to the North.
The house is lived as a unique space without doors, where the limits of the different uses is defined by its height, light, shadow and relation with the open space. The central patio is the only autonomous space, where the physical limit is precise and delimited. The construction is elementary and refined, looking for a constructive and economic optimization: concrete structure with interiors and external walls with a pigmented single mass material. Floors are in pigmented concrete, as well as ceilings. The building seems to be a monolite with well thought solutions where light, shadow and air dominate and signify the precise functions.
