The Casa Verde – Collective Housing project, in the historic centre of Alcobaça, near Alcobaça Monastery, comes out of a wish to preserve and continue the history of a building marked by time. Its green façade, deeply rooted in the memory of the street, is understood as an essential element, not simply to be retained but to be reinterpreted with delicacy.
The scheme looks for a subtle balance between what stays and what changes. The original logic of the building is kept, now adapted to five dwellings: two three-bedroom flats, one one-bedroom flat and two studio flats with direct access to the rear yard, where each space finds a new way of living without losing its identity. Small moves — the reworking of the openings, the introduction of planting, the care taken over the choice of materials — build a quiet architecture, but a deliberate one.
The new work shows itself above all on the rear elevation, in a light metal skin that wraps and transforms it, working as a support for planting and as a new inhabited plane, where the architecture comes close to nature. In the rear yard, a sculptural element — the spiral stair — draws the space and orders the routes through it, freeing the ground and making a presence at once functional and expressive.
The rear yard thus becomes an extension of the home: a shared space where light, planting and time acquire a presence, and the boundary between inside and outside blurs.
More than refurbishing, the project proposes to continue: respecting what is there, adding what is needed and letting the building live again with a new calm.
- Project
- P005 _ Casa Verde Collective Housing
- Location
- Alcobaça, Leiria
- Project stage
- Concept design, planning submission, technical design and contractor selection.
- Area
- 419 m²
- Architecture
- Nova Origem Arquitectos
- Contractor
- Planeta D’Aparências Lda
- Client
- Private
- 3D modelling
- Nova Origem Arquitectos
