Courela House

Between the existing house and the new construction, the project explores two ways of inhabiting the montado landscape. The first stems from permanence: the traditional Alentejo house is reorganized through a restrained intervention, preserving its scale, proportion, and presence in the landscape. The second introduces a new construction, autonomous in its language yet shaped by the very same territory.

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The new building follows the slope and unfolds across two levels without overlapping floors, maintaining the profile of a low, continuous volume. The social spaces open southwards over the expanse of the montado; the bedrooms are distributed between east and west, alternating between a close relationship with the ground and a suspended position over the landscape. To the north, the office and multipurpose room draw close to the cork oaks and a more sheltered light.

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Exposed concrete, textured by timber shuttering, provides thickness and continuity to the built planes. Above them, a green roof reinstates the meadow interrupted by the building footprint, extending the topography and allowing the architecture, rather than imposing itself on the land, to blend and disappear into it.