Carlos Castanheira brings order to abandonded caretaker's cottage in Braga
Portuguese architect Carlos Castanheira has remodeled an ageing stone cottage into a contemporary upside-down home.
Situated on a farm in Famalicão, in Portugal’s Braga area, the beforehand deserted caretaker’s cottage is now São Cosme Home, a two-storey household dwelling.
Castanheira’s renovation uncovers the unique timber roof construction, provides a bed room wing and offers the constructing a wholly new inside format.
This upside-down format locations bedrooms and loo downstairs, liberating the higher degree for an open-plan dwelling and eating house with elevated views of the encompassing countryside.
“The temporary was comparatively easy, however with a level of complexity nonetheless,” defined Castanheira.
“This complexity was a results of the steep slope and since the varied current buildings had been unfold over completely different terraces.”
Castanheira selected to make lots of the design choices for São Cosme Home on web site somewhat than on the strategy planning stage, in order that he may adapt his concepts to suit the present situations of the constructing.
“That is how I prefer it to be and what makes it enjoyable,” he stated.
The choice to disclose the roof construction got here after the previous ceiling was eliminated and the eucalyptus wooden beams had been discovered to be in comparatively good situation beneath.
Equally, when the constructing’s foundations had been discovered to be inadequate, the crew realised they might decrease the ground degree with minimal additional work required.
“We took the chance to go barely decrease, as a way to improve the room peak,” stated Castanheira.
Present home windows had been retained and new openings had been additionally made, to permit glazed doorways to be put in on the northeast and southeast partitions.
“There have been traces of earlier openings and their later closing up. Attainable corrections or variations,” stated Castanheira. “We cleared away what we thought extreme and we opened up quite a bit.”
In its renovated type, the format of the decrease ground types a quadrangle with rooms within the corners and a connecting hallway within the center.
The primary bed room is situated in an extension on the northeast facet of the constructing. The roof of this block serves as a balcony terrace for the ground above.
One other new block was additionally added at a decrease degree, which serves as a service entrance. It gives sheltered automotive parking, a laundry room and a workshop.
Wooden was the popular materials for many of the new additions, though some metal was required to supply extra assist for the repaired roof.
Castanheira believes that the hands-on method has resulted in a constructing the place it’s laborious to pick which elements are previous and which elements are new.
“After we return there, it is as if it has been this manner for ages,” he stated. “However a considerable transformation has taken place, for the higher. That is the way in which structure needs to be.”
Castanheira relies in Porto and is probably greatest often known as a long-time collaborator of Pritzker Prize-winning architect Álvaro Siza.
The pair labored collectively on quite a few initiatives together with the Mimesis Museum in South Korea and the Worldwide Design Museum of China.
São Cosme Home was accomplished for a consumer that Castanheira had beforehand labored with on different initiatives. The architect is presently exploring choices to construct one other home on the identical land, atop a big granite outcrop.
The pictures is by Fernando Guerra.
Venture credit
Architect: Carlos Castanheira Architects
Venture crew: Carlos Castanheira, Rita Ferreira, Mariana Mendes, Sofia Conceição, Maria Arez
Structural engineering: HDP Development and Engineering Initiatives
Carpentry: Carpincunha Madeiras
Metalwork: Obvicerto Unipessoal
Zinc: ASA – A. Sousa Alves, Revestimentos de Zinco e Cobre
Development: CMCunha Construções Unipessoal
