HQ Architecture + Portugal

Paula Santos: HOUSE in OVAR by PAULA SANTOS

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Paula Santos

Surrounded by lagoons and saltpans, Ovar in Portugal is conveniently located between the northern cities of Oporto and Aveiro.

Paula Santos

The house at Ovar is an exercise where we stretched to the limit a number of ideas and concepts for a long time already contained in other projects, which had never been put in place.

Paula Santos

It is also – and above all – a project, which allows for thinking with other people about their own way of inhabiting a dwelling.

Paula Santos

The large-scale project, covering 680m2,to be located on not very stable sandy soil allowed us to ponder the house as an object which develops in a continuum.

Paula Santos

The need to design the main programme of the house as a ground floor meant that the difference between spaces was implemented by means of variable heights in geometric forms: in respect of their importance and meaning, the most expressive areas such as the swimming pool and the painter’s studio or the body of the entrance from the street acquire more expressive and more elevated forms.

Paula Santos

The idea for the object in concrete, a traditionally sculptable material, appears implicit in this concept, designing the elevations with level and sloping surfaces up to the coverage.

Paula Santos

The length of the corridor is used to distribute the desired functions and large areas, further creating clipping plan, which allow for a relation with landscape, with the various wooded areas to be constructed suggesting outdoor leisure.

Paula Santos
Paula Santos
Paula Santos
Paula Santos

Location: Ovar, PortugalArchitect: Paula Santos Arquitectura Collaboration: Joana Machado, Nuno Silva, Vasco Novais, Ana Renata PinhoLandscape architecture: Victor Beiramar DinizFoundations and structures: AFA Consult, Carlos QuinazElectrical installations, safety, communications: AFA Consult, Raul SerafimMechanical equipment, heating, gas: AFA Consult, Carlos AlmeidaHydraulic engineering: AFA Consult, Susana MirandaConstruction: Construtora do Loureiro, LdaYear: 2008Client: Laura Malaquias, Carlos MendonçaPhoto: Nelson Garrido