This fishing town with strong Islamic influence presents an irregular and organic mesh of narrow streets and overlapping buildings in a recognizable cubist volumetry.
The existing 2-story building, with high vaulted ceilings and a roof terrace, fits the typology of popular architecture, which we intended to preserve, enhance, and retrofit.
The social areas of the house are placed on the ground floor, in a total area of 90m2 – A kitchen and living room in open space, served by a new patio that arises from the demolition of a vaulted ceiling. The interior-exterior connection is made through the two pre-existing arches, giving the spaces a sense of continuity between them.
The patio is part of a set of outdoor spaces, one per floor, where we intend to recreate the memory of the social and leisure experience of the traditional Algarve house. On the ground floor is the patio with a water tank, on the first floor is the base landing of the original outdoor stairs, with a view over Ria Formosa.
On the upper floor are the two bedrooms with en-suite bathrooms where the original high ceilings are lowered to improve the comfort level of the rooms. The left-over space of these ceilings is used to incorporate infrastructural equipment.
The characteristic finishing materials of this type of construction are maintained or reconstituted, such as the terracotta tiles, present in all the floors (interior and exterior) but an alternative addition stands out – the white metallic elements in the exterior spaces – present in the spiral staircases, in the railings and in the shading structure that punctuates the roof terrace.




















