Eit smells. Like spring, like herbs and gently like the sea. The four houses crouch in the mountain with pointed humps. In the distance, a dusty sky glows over the Atlantic, the rays of the setting sun gently wiping the day into evening. We drive up the mountain on a gravel road, a simple gate opens, and then it goes steeply up again to the parking lot of house 1.
We are in Pa.Te.Os in Melides on the Portuguese Riviera. The four buildings are on a mountain, but they also disappear into it. If you walk up to them, they appear small, only their gables are visible from above, their true size is hidden by nature. I was very interested in the project,” says the Lisbon architect Manuel Aires Mateus, known for his minimalist, sometimes brutalist construction methods. “I was trying to access a memory. In this area there were many abandoned houses, of which only the outer walls were standing. ruins, if you will. I’ve always wondered what it would be like to inhabit them. In fact, Pa.Te.Os was an opportunity for me to work on this archetype of memory – that is, to build the ruin myself and then to intervene on top of the ruin.”
The materials in the interior are simple but exquisite.
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Bild: Joao Guimarães
That sounds interesting, but uncomfortable, but where one suspects cerebral coolness, one expects mild friendliness. You walk on slate steps that look like they are made of wood when it rains. Look at concrete walls that resemble a wooden wall thanks to the rough formwork. Walk between flower beds towards a sharp-angled pool typical of the architect and see the inner courtyards (patios) from which the Pa.Te.Os owes its name. The spelling is based on antiquity, explains builder Miguel Charters, a former lawyer, now a real estate entrepreneur and soon also a winegrower. In March, he and his wife Sofia plan to plant 28,000 vines on 17 plots of their 100-hectare estate.
Frame the view of the valley
The brief for these four houses was: maximum privacy, sea views from every bed and respect for the landscape, in this case a mountain. But why inner courtyards as a design principle? “A patio frames the sky, the view of the outside. It allows maximum closeness to nature at any time of the year and you can flavor it, plant herbs, trees, bushes,” explains Charters.
The inner courtyards form picture frames for the wide view of the valley, massive terrace windows disappear into the walls, even the birdhouses in the trees look as if they also have those typical, wide-angled roofs that you often see in the Alentejo. The bathtubs are hewn from blocks of marble, as are the sinks, which Charters hand-picked at the quarry. They spent five years building it, and of course the whole thing could have been done in 18 months, says Charters with pride, the construction cost four million euros.
Retreat, cast in concrete.
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Image: Arezu Weitholz
Architect Manuel Aires Mateus is now used to extravagant holiday homes – there is another holiday home he built nearby, and in neighboring Comporta are the Cabanas no Rio and the Casas na Areia by the Rodrigues brothers’ Silent Living group, which, like the Charters family, are friends with him. “This project is maybe a kind of sequel. The previous houses were more compact, their patios were part of the overall shape,” says Manuel Aires Mateus. “Here, the major goal was to create spaces that open to the outside. Due to the reference to the inner courtyards, the space no longer has any limits. Interior and exterior merge into one large roof.”