Casa em Salicos — Nova Origem Arquitectos

The project sits in a territory marked by time, a place of ruin, memory and agricultural production, where the Algarve landscape shows itself arid and deeply rooted in vernacular building practices.

The intervention begins with the need to touch the ruin, taking it as the origin of the new gesture. The house grows out of that continuity and is arranged in two volumes, set down with respect for the topography. Set to the north, the bedroom volume faces south, taking on a more private character; at a lower level, the living volume opens to the south and west, taking in the evening light. Between the two, a courtyard articulates the spaces and holds a transition between inside and outside.

The lower volume, partly buried and flat-roofed, recalls the old threshing floors, carrying the ground on across a green roof. The upper volume, dual-pitched, takes on the simplicity of Algarve architecture, crossed by a vertical element that marks the hearth as the centre of the house.

The materials come from the earth and from the light: Santa Catarina terracotta floor tiles, timber and warm tones. The earth-toned clay brick façade works as a filter, drawing shadows and regulating solar exposure.

Inside, the bedrooms reinterpret the nets of the arte xávega, the age-old beach-seine fishing of the Portuguese coast, in which the net, hauled up onto the shore, draws taut curves across the landscape. That logic is translated into shallow vaults in natural earth, which bring rhythm and depth, and where the light breaks up and builds a quiet, sensory atmosphere.

Between openness and retreat, the house looks for balance. The living areas spread out into the landscape, while the sitting room, half-buried, brings the eye close to the earth.

A calm architecture, where living means being in continuous relation with light, time and place.