Casa Fonte

To build their two new houses on a family land, the Fonte brothers had to demolish the old beach house. The volume is part of the idea of affirming a compact mass to which small parallelepipedic portions are subtracted to mark special functions: entrances, porches and balconies. This is only contradicted by the opening of punctual windows, aligned by the inner face of the walls, and always squared.

  Because Paulo Lousinha was interested in the autonomization of both entrances, these are located in opposite corners: at Rua dos Faróis next to the extreme west and at Avenida da Bela Vista in the extreme north. In both cases the mass subtraction of the initial pure volume is clear, creating a small porch and masking the volume of the garage. Although each entrance share car and pedestrian access, they are separated by a box that will receive all of the infrastructures paraphernalia.

The program is simple and is organized for each of the houses on three floors. On the entrance level the kitchen and the toilet are concealed in a volume lined with walnut and leaving the rest of the floor plant all free; on the raised floor, two small rooms, toilets and a suite. Under the roof, an informal space without a definite use.

Casa Fonte, Praia da Costa Nova, Portugal
Program: single family house
Architect: Paulo Lousinha – Lousinha Arquitectos
Collabotators: José Miguel Figueiredo, Matteo Losurdo, Barbora Šímová
Completion: 2016