This Home in Portugal Turns Convention Upside Down—Starting With the Roof

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Project Details:

Location: Matosinhos, Portugal

Architect: Fala Atelier / @fala.atelier

Footprint: 2,580 square feet

Photographer: Francisco Ascensão / @francisco.ascensao

From the Architect: “Within a defined footprint, an unexpected figure arises. The conventional sloped roof of the suburban house is inverted—one side curved, the other straight—producing a peculiar silhouette that disrupts the monotonous suburbia. The volume resembles an exploded box sitting on a translucent plinth. Different vertical and slanted surfaces are set apart with different colors, each meticulously chosen. Round and square windows punctuate the white canvas, composing three distinct elevations; some seem to mimic faces, some evoke imaginary animals. The facade’s playful palette extends to the blue and green shutters, concealing the openings and rendering the house akin to a paper collage, where colored figures are scattered across the white canvas. Hues of green, blue, light green, black, white, and green again. On the inside, the structure divorces itself from the wall: a sequence of five slender, light green concrete columns reveals itself in different rooms, obstructing daily routines. One of these columns is on the terrace supporting nothing. The living space on the ground floor is open to the garden and connected to the office above. The complexity of the sporadic interior results from double-height spaces, occasional kinks in walls, concrete columns, and the gently sloped ceiling. On the top floor, the primary bedroom finds its place within an extruded quarter-circle space. The house is carefully assembled out of surfaces—straight, folded, cut, curved, and tilted—whether crafted from concrete, marble, or glass brick. They divide, overlap, intersect, and cover. These surfaces are anchored by columns that boldly punch through. The interior space meanders between the choreographed elements. The figure of the house is simultaneously complete and broken.”