In the rural area of Macieira da Lixa, in a small agricultural complex already partially deactivated, it was intended the conversion of a drying shed into housing for holidays and weekends.

 

A type of shelter that in other times served to store and expose to the action of the sun and the wind the cereals and a great part of the fruits of the earth, complementing the function of the threshing floor that adjoins him. The dry one was erected perpendicular to the north side of the yard, complemented by the threshing floor, which was still standing but already threatening ruin.

 

The construction was rudimentary. Raised on thick stone-masonry walls, where its volume was enclosed, it opened onto a granite porticoed structure (props and lintels) in its relationship with the threshing floor and the terrace, opening to the west two more spans (independent of this structure) of different dimensions. The response to the program led to the creation of an addition to the drying shed. The new construction arose from the idea of having a more intimate space (office/bedroom) on the ground floor, that was easily accessible and became autonomous with the addition of a sanitary installation. The rest of the program was distributed over the two floors of the drying shed: living/dining room and kitchen on the ground floor, and two bedrooms and a bathroom on the upper floor.

 

Articulated with the drying shed through a small vestibule, the new construction detaches itself from it, allowing separate temporal readings, but which inevitably touch by sharing the same physical space. Of pure and carefully dimensioned volumetry, the complementary construction demands a new protagonism, not in an attempt to confront the pre-existing, but to seek an understanding between their identities, now fused within the desire for transformation that animates the project.

 

The interior space is arranged in such a way that the zones of greater permanence are designed in a relationship of continuity and extension between the interior and the exterior. Despite the provision of a more conventional and localized entrance, the main access to the interior of the dwelling is, after all, the threshing floor which, materialized in a stone slab, constitutes an external extension of the dwelling area, also maintaining the pre-existing granite floor.

This is assumed as the central space of the dwelling, in relation to the surrounding terrain, provided by the porticoed structure that delimits it, and in the transition to the remaining interior spaces.

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Location. Macieira da Lixa, Portugal

Date. 2004 | 2014

Architecture. José Gigante, Ângelo Lopes, M. Fernando Santos

Collaboration. Pedro Barata Castro

Photography. Luís Ferreira Alves

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