Aires Mateus Casas na Areia

This project is a response to very specific conditions. Its basis is the recovery of existing wood-masonry buildings, providing the complex with a homogeneous unity under a sloping roof. The design begins with the existing material conditions, depending on their inhabitation potential.
The brief suggests the renovation of the masonry buildings, adapting them for use as individual rooms, while one of the two wooden volumes is converted into a two-bedroom pavilion and the other is the pavilion for common areas.
The street entrance emerges through the sandy ground, which is used as a basis for all the constructions. This treated material is spread as paving inside the community pavilion, qualifying the domestic conditions with a sense of natural comfort. The textural continuity of powerful material like sand changes the scale of the interior spaces, making the act of inhabitation a unique poetic experience, fitting for the sort of experience sought for this place.