Dezeen Magazine

House in Ovar by Paula Santos

This concrete house in Portugal by architect Paula Santos features an indoor swimming pool and a painter's studio (+ slideshow).

House in Ovar by Paula Santos

Most rooms in the house are at ground floor level on either side of a long corridor and only an ensuite bedroom is located upstairs.

House in Ovar by Paula Santos

The roof pitches upwards in three places to accommodate this first floor and to give high ceilings to the studio and pool room.

House in Ovar by Paula Santos

Paved terraces and a grass lawn surround the house and a concrete canopy provides an outdoor shelter with circular skylights.

House in Ovar by Paula Santos

More concrete houses in Portugal worth a look include one with a large hole in its wall and one with a concrete upper storey and glass walls below.

House in Ovar by Paula Santos

See more projects in Portugal »

House in Ovar by Paula Santos

Photography is by Nelson Garrido.

House in Ovar by Paula Santos

Here's some extra text sent by the photographer:


House in Ovar

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

House in Ovar by 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.

House in Ovar by 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.

House in Ovar by 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.

House in Ovar by 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.

House in Ovar by Paula Santos

Client: Laura Malaquias, Carlos Mendonça
Architecture: Paula Santos
Collaboration Joana Machado, Nuno Silva, Vasco Novais, Ana Renata Pinho

House in Ovar by Paula Santos

Foundations and structures: AFA Consult, Carlos Quinaz
Electrical installations, safety, communications: AFA Consult, Raul Serafim

House in Ovar by Paula Santos

Mechanical equipment, heating, gas: AFA Consult, Carlos Almeida
Hydraulic AFA Consult: Susana Miranda

House in Ovar by Paula Santos

Landscape architecture: Victor Beiramar Diniz
Construction: Construtora do Loureiro, Lda