The housing program is organized with lateral access in a small access setback that leads to the public areas of the house: the living room and dining room. The kitchen is located at the crossroads of the two arms of the "L" as an intermediate joint between the public and private rooms made up of three bedrooms and a study.
Primus house by Lopes Pertile Architects. Photograph by João Morgado.
Project description by Lopes Pertile Architects
“This house represents my mind: sequential, rigorous, systematic and clear.”
These were the client’s words when seeing the project.
Therefore, the house becomes the reflection of who lives in it, which has been given a shape, transforming it into Architecture.
That’s why when the client expressed a strong desire about having an “L” shape house, we embraced this challenge, without preconceptions or clichés, through experimentation and above all, focusing on building well, following the project from its creative conception to its rigorous construction, thinking about the architecture as the art of giving.
From the Latin “primus”, so the first work is born, from the search for the essence, the primordium of something for its user, as well as for its creators.
Casa Primus looks at a generous hilly landscape and enjoys a privileged and unique view of a rural context, gently lay down on a natural podium.
The house is integrated with the site and belongs to it thanks to the topography design that allows the house to welcome the surroundings, in continuity with the landscape and vice versa.
The Architecture dialogues with the landscape creating a relationship that is neither mimesis nor antithesis, but the balance between them.
Primus house by Lopes Pertile Architects. Photograph by João Morgado.
This horizontal line of the house goes along with the horizontality of the hills, in a relationship of continuity. At the same time, the sight of this clear white line stands out against the sinuous profile of the hilly green background.
Thanks to their close proximity, the house and the landscape enhance and intensify their own different characters.
The exterior goes into the interior, through limited spaces, the porches, which are subtractions that break the “L” shape, becoming a place that hosts domestic life, sheltered transitional moments and lastly frames of the landscape.
The transition between the bedrooms and the porch was solved with the construction of a detail that allowed a fluid passage, without any obstacle at the floor or ceiling level, maintaining a constant height.
The glass surface of the bedrooms reflects the hill it faces and although it hosts several spaces, this partition is not read from the outside, because the interior walls do not extend to the façade, but rather reduce their thickness just before touching the window frame.
In this house, the custom-made details contribute to the simple and long-lasting construction, consistent with the economy of means.
Everything was thought, designed and custom built, this way the project can be read in its entirety, where the detail is the key to the whole and the whole can be reflected in its details, materialized by a careful work of local craftsmanship.
The constant goal for this project was the simplicity of its result which is nothing more than a solved complexity.
