Milhundos House | Francisco Portugal e Gomes

Milhundos House in Penafiel, Portugal, designed by Portuguese architect Francisco Portugal e Gomes. The house is organized in two distinct volumes with contrast color and materials to accommodate different functions, linked by the entrance foyer.

+ Project description below provided by architect, Francisco Portugal e Gomes

The plot is located in the outskirts of Penafiel, in the valley of the Cavalum River and is inserted in an allotment near the Farm of the Flagstones Park.

Site Plan courtesy Francisco Portugal e Gomes

The proposal modifies the implementation anticipated in the original allotment, and resumes the duplication rule, not observed in the buildings of the adjacent lots, seeking a more articulated solution with the nearest volumes and simultaneously taking the vast ambiguities and disarrangements between the allotment and the lot drawings into account.

Sketch courtesy Francisco Portugal e Gomes

The house is organized in two autonomous, but complementary functional blocks, according to bi-nuclear functional principle, to which correspond two distinct volumes connected by the entrance foyer. This reception space, with natural light in the interior ceiling, it is contained in a small box covered with a warm colour wood, assure diagonal perceptions between the two nucleus and a fluid interior connection.

Ground Floor Plan courtesy Francisco Portugal e Gomes

First Floor Plan courtesy Francisco Portugal e Gomes

Elevations + Sections courtesy Francisco Portugal e Gomes

The slate/dark stone covered volume contains the living and dining/kitchen areas and the white plastered volume, is for the night’s repose areas. Each one of these volumes has different relations towards the exterior space: the white seeks the most distant landscape; the dark has a more direct contact with the surrounding garden.

The applied materials condense a domestic duality, which is projected in the public space, in between the intimate and the public, the day and the night, the light and the darkness, that here finds an inverted expression. To the night nucleus it correspond a white plaster and to the day nucleus consists a facing, clad with a dark stone.

The conceptual principle is deeply related with the low budget available, the program of the house and the conditions of the place itself. The initial scanty budget creates not only an economic, but above all a conceptual challenge. All the process was thought and felt in a permanent dialectics between the maximum of systematization and restraint, and the uttermost expressive outcomes.

A project, is not good a project when it is solely used to satisfy a functional and economical program, it has to satisfy another type of questions, such as substance and the character. And nevertheless, a good project does not necessarily lead to a good work. The author must look for the work’s own character in a process permanently alive and pledged.

+ Project credits/data

Project name: Milhundos House
Function: Single family house
Author: Francisco Portugal e Gomes
Garden Design: Francisco Portugal e Gomes

Consultancy/external collaboration:

Structure and Foundations: José Marcos Jorge, engineer
Water Supply and Water Installations: José Marcos Jorge, engineer
Electric Installations and Communications: António Correia, engineer

Area: 240 m2
Costs: 100 000 €
Cost /m2: 416 € / m2
Project: 1996-1997
Construction: 1997-2002
Photography: Fernando Gabriel
Location: Milhundos, Penafiel, Portugal

+ All images and drawings courtesy Francisco Portugal e Gomes | Photo by Fernando Gabriel