Cerca Guesthouse

Living the exception and the repetition

Involved by diversified planimetry and altimetry in Foz do Douro, within urban tissues in transformation and consolidation, the project takes advantage of the previous horizontal and longitudinal occupation that existed in the neighborhood, as a result of the housing and industrial occupation of the 19th century. The urban front consolidated by the project renovation absorbs the eccentric uses of the collective program that extends linearly to the South and laterally to the West with individual units destined for the guesthouse, visually and physically related to the street towards the East. Urban and historically conditioned, the intervention interprets the previous outline and proposes new patrimonial and environmental values, motivated by the common use that extends across the street.

The ground floor of the main and front volume skillfully manages the common uses of the guesthouse, the entrance and garage of the permanent dwelling installed on the upper floor where the modular rooms draw the image of the street and the shared spaces look for the collective program placed along the street. The rule and the exception co-exist regarding memory and history. The management of the two uses generates the domestic scale of the whole that returns to the conceptual starting point, historically and morphologically inspired by the model of Ilha do Porto. Between the repeated rhythm of the framed openings of the main body and the linearity of the windows with shutters that extends to the South, the dialogue is conditioned with the street and open on the backyard with its own image and language.