Delgada 1
Our clients acquired a house and garden in Delgada, a hamlet 75 km north of Lisbon, and asked us to renovate the house and add a pergola with swimming pool to the garden. Being a commission for an interior renovation and a new work, we decided to consider them as 2 different projects: this project concerns the new work.
The house, circled by a large lawn, couples materials and decorative elements of varied sources in search of a certain dignity and solidity. We intuitively rejected any idea of dialogue with this house, but it would not be convenient for the pergola to be too far from it. There were, near the kitchen door, 2 trees on the lawn. We placed the pergola between the trees, parallel to the house, aligned with the front porch. The pool, following the pergola, hastens over hills cultivated with vines, apple trees and pines to the south, leaving the neo-rustic world behind.
Careful consideration of geography, garden and house did not lead us to a process of osmosis, on the contrary: pergola and pool form a massive, symmetrical and repetitive ensemble that could be older than all the rest. The pergola builds a particular atmosphere, simultaneously domestic and permeable, robust and sensitive. The pool, clad in pink marble, unexpectedly cuts out the concrete and gives water an electric turquoise tone.
We tried to work only with fundamental architectural elements, coupling them in a way that is not classic or baroque, old or modern, but all that in unison. We sought light, shadows, close and distant context, to participate, as much as concrete and stone, in building this atmosphere. We are interested in the capacity of architecture to provide the living perception of each instant and, simultaneously, the consciousness of a time scale that transcends us.
