Cura’s House / Atelier AAVV

The rehabilitation of a constructing is, at its essence, a matter of identification. If the ruined remnants of the previous are a faint, generally cherished reminiscence of what we as soon as had been, the chance for reconstruction is a window to an unsure, generally desired future that we now have but to develop into. Standing earlier than the profound query of what an deserted constructing needs to be, pre-conceived concepts on tips on how to proceed, whether or not pushed by nostalgia or by a recent impulse, aren’t sufficient. What appears sure is that it poses, in its entirety, the problem of the architectural undertaking. It is about not letting go of the previous or the brand new, listening to the stones that stay and the wind that carries them, placing all the pieces on the desk without delay, and searching for, amidst the noise and silence, the design of a development that has its personal order and, inside that order, uncovers a type we did not but know.

At Casa do Cura, it was the smash of a standard development system and the tight house of the constructing within the metropolis that confirmed us tips on how to construct. A brand new construction, the place the identical pine wooden, spanning throughout the total depth of the constructing, defines the potential for a lightweight development core that, between the inherited strong partitions, can freely form the house.

Thus, past the painted wooden and the sunshine partitions that hook up with the strong ones in steady plaster, we introduced in clay, which in Lisbon is all the time discovered on rooftops, bringing it additionally to its place on the ground, a well-known stone for power, and a overseas one for distinction, and we used remnants to mark the doorway, with the door quantity constructed from earth gathered on the development website, and an previous stone serving as step one.

Alongside this journey, we aimed to create a home that would proceed to be many homes, the place the road stage ground and the attic had been what their names evoke in our reminiscence, and that was, relatively than a functionally organized house, a constellation of areas that, being opened by the liberty discovered within the span of the construction, would hold room for the tales that point may carry.