The Interior Garden of Memory

    House Refurbishment

    2018

    Francelos, Porto, Portugal

A house can be a book or a plant. Due to discovered infested woodwork, slabs, and walls, the concept to keep typology and interiors of this seafront house shifted. With two teenage boys, the technique evolved to deal with the non-linear dynamics of modern family life.

The upper wood partitions for sleeping hubs, two new flats at extremes, and earlier stone walls visible at circulation in the middle are supported by a new concrete slab barely touching the walls. As a dense textured light descends softly through the original stone walls and new dark wood interiors, that core divides and centers life, use.

Then, with a few recast stones, doors, baseboards, and railings, composes a new repository, a tapestry as outer pavement, with two new popping glass-eyed cubic bow windows looking from the living and dining rooms.

Hofeland's hypothesis, which predates Freud, of understanding the fetus-mother bond as a sensory plant, in the symbiotic state between the stone and the interdependent sensorial, is referred to by Sloterdijk in Spheres.

The ocean movement and rumor at the end of the plot seems to agree with this thought, as the leaves and branches of the trees along the avenue framing the neighborhood tremble.

Client

Raquel Rebelo and Ivo Barros

Project Leader

Francesco Ugolotti

Status

Building

Collaborators

Katarzina Malinowska

Engineering

Pedro Leite

Builder

Baldrame / Eng. Nelson Costa