Cork House, Palmeira de Faro Building, Portugal Design, Esposende Property Image

Cork House Portugal : Esposende Architecture

Esposende Residence, Portugal design by Arquitectos Anónimos

25 Aug 2009

Location: Palmeira de Faro, Esposende, Portugal
Date built: 2008
Design: Arquitectos Anónimos

A simple form clad in cork and animated by groups of metal shutters

Cork House photos © Ivo Canelas

Cork House

Cork is left to get fascinated for the first and more efficient act of environmentalism: the discipline of budget containment; left involved in a very unusual dialogue process in which our commissioner convinced us to be possible to construct with a so restricted limit.

Instead of asking “what we have that to invest to become life easier” we decide to cultivate the “back to basics”, here, without the moral exploitation of the “propaganda of the crisis”. On the other hand, if the “technology of the efficiency” grows in the majority of the cases, in persecution the errors that try to minimize, cannot be a sponge on our global conscience – before reducing the impact cork happens on the reduced impact.

Cork House in Portugal

The implantation, decided by shortcut affinity substitutes an obsolete construction familiar headquarters, becoming possible to keep the point of meeting of all in the vacation times, being loaded the symbology of the central slice of farm, now broken and distributed between brothers.

The orientation, supported in the customer´s thrifty, out of rhetoric presumption, obtains the biggest possible privacy, data to be depleted the construction possibility in the South confrontations. A spine that crosses longitudinally the 7x21m rectangle, fractures it in a basic agreement of the solar necessity: light North for less noble areas (bathrooms and cooks) and South light for the most inhabited. Contrary ones are configured two elevations (positive-negative); one concentrates and accumulates the openings, another one spreads in the length.

The perforated metal panels, in regimen of low constructive effort obtain an efficient ventilation very, locking up all the opened surface, filtering the natural light and strengthening a fortified appearance that makes it difficult the perception if the house busy or it is abandoned. By exterior, the light reflection ,does not disclose life beyond but they allow to the occupant a comfortable vigilant condition.

The inexistence of one conventional entrance, dissimulated in the bellows gate the West elevation, confirms a synthetic boarding very, in a evoking tendency of a more impersonal construction, for the universe “housing”.

This dense and efficiently isolating one – 0,04 W (m.K) agglomerated block of cork oak is taken owner of the totality of the surface, something more than a simple thermal isolation, an covering declaring a friendly distance: involving stranger to constructed, soft and familiar one to lands cultivated in surround – an alive landscaping that we rescued, far from the ornamental, innocent and bucolic green space.

The subjection the underlying conditions to the variation of the small community, legalizes a interior in rude almost: a simplified system of light thick partition walls in panel wooden recycled with standard cement (40% of the interior walls), wood carpentries of the renewable forest, ceilings and floors directly painted.

Some arranged it many “nick names”: pavilion, the cork, the shelter. This expressed adjective on the object (house) finally recognizes the enriched union between “vacation” and “landscape”, leaving explicit the chance of straight link between them.

Construír Prize 2008 with ‘best private building’
Prémios Construír 2008 na categoria ‘melhor edifício privado’

Cork House in Esposende – Building Information

Project name: cork house
Type of project: 2nd residence – built
Place: Palmeira de Faro, Esposende, Portugal
Plot area: 8.900m2
Construction area: 300 m2

Client: Maria Helena Ramos / Hernâni Lopes
Undertaker: Construções Irmãos Ramalho Lda.
Project year: 2004-05
Construction year: 2008

Architecture: Arquitectos Anónimos®
Structure: Ricardo Fonseca
Electrical consultant: Luís Fernandes
Water and sewage network: Luís Picotês Gonçalves
Heating: Luís Fernandes