Architects: Trika ArquiteturaArea : 138 m²Year : 2017Photographs : Efreu Quintana
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Casa da Silveira was originally designed by Helena in 2000 as a single compact volume – a glass and wood cabin standing on a stone base.
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Inside the stone base were placed the bedrooms and bathrooms; and above them, the glass prism modulated in plan and height in order to create flexible spaces whose only fixed function is to allow integration with the natural landscape.
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Two decades ago, Casa da Silveira related to the landscape as a vertical prism, opposing the horizontality of the lawns and low vegetation of the surroundings, outstanding not for its materiality or size, but for its proportions.
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But time goes on. The transparency of the building allowed following the recovery of the hill’s native vegetation – the result of cycles of planting, observation, and maintenance –
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and also the process of built development in the area, imposing new relationships, new landscape frameworks, and new proportions to the surroundings.
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The children also grew up, and the new logic of use emerged. The house, then, needed to gain a little more comfort and update its relations to the site.
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Strategy. We chose to expand the volume of the base – fit a new suite under the projection of the old deck – in order to take advantage of the land cut made during the initial work, and maintain the same projection area of the volumes.
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The rearrangement made it possible to transform the former bathroom of the suite into a laundry room, configuring a service and circulation corridor next to the retaining wall.
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The composition strategy was to extend the volume of the base and insert between the two volumes – base and glass box – a concrete plane that finishes off the top of the stone masonry while creating a protective marquise for the balcony of the rooms.
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Paved plans were organized around the house, according to existing and new gardens, some rocks, and the densification of the surrounding woods.
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Finally, substituting a fire pit used as a barbecue place, a quincho fitted to the hill was designed as if it were a kitchen window open to the landscape.
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Result. This results in a continuity of the formal and spatial relationships defined by the original project. Not a static continuity, but an adaptation: the context has changed, and the house has also changed to continue in frank and positive dialogue.
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Casa da Silveira gains more space and comfort as it grows and expands as the natural environment around it also does.
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A glass and wood cabin that is now in the middle of the woods: where there were only bushes, now trunks can be seen;
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where before there was the only sky, today there are green canopies; and where there was only grass, there are gardens, and an orchard is already growing.
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Thus, while the vegetation becomes vertical, the house becomes horizontal and assumes a more invisible and discreet role in the landscape. Time passes, the landscape and life change, and the house follows suit.
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Credit: ArchDaily