Nuno Grande e Pedro Gadanho

Casa em Carreço – Viana do Castelo

(Continuación)

Nuno Grande:
ac44 (at) netcabo.pt

Fotos: FG+SG Fernando Guerra + Sérgio Guerra
Fotografia: Fernando Guerra
Produção Fotográfica: Sérgio Guerra

Texto original en portugués::

Casa em Carreço, Viana do Castelo
por Nuno Grande e Pedro Gadanho

O projecto adapta o programa requerido a um lote estreito e alongado, de pendente suave, sobre a costa atlântica. Minimizando impactos paisagísticos e contornando a imposição regulamentar de profundidade, o volume principal “molda-se” à morfologia do terreno através da extensão, em consola, dos pisos superiores.
Uma dessas projecções, com cerca de 8 metros, dá-se na forma de uma varanda-pátio exterior, suspensa e aberta sobre o jardim e a paisagem envolvente. Deste modo, um efeito de “deslizamento” horizontal domina as volumetrias, permitindo “desmaterializar” a verticalidade da habitação. Na “pele” do edifício lê-se, assim, a presença das circulações e serviços que abraçam, nos diferentes pisos, o núcleo central e o seu “esqueleto” estrutural.
A nível construtivo, inverte-se uma situação corrente. No interior, denunciam-se, na estereotomia do betão branco aparente, as paredes-viga que sustentam o núcleo e prolongam a sala de estar na varanda suspensa. No exterior, revestem-se os diferentes planos a cappotto e evidencia-se a alternância da cor no jogo expressivo dos volumes.
Finalmente, diferentes aberturas, emolduradas por caixilhos em madeira, relembram-nos a incontornável presença do mar.

Texto original en inglés::

Weekend Retreat in Carreço, Viana do Castelo
by Nuno Grande and Pedro Gadanho

The design adapts the program to a narrow and long plot, with a smooth slope, over the Atlantic shore.
Minimizing landscape impacts, and skipping the legal setback, the main volume "moulds" itself to the site's topography through the cantilevered extension of the upper floors.
One of these projections, with near 8 meters, configures a balcony-terrace outside, hovering and opening onto the garden and the surrounding landscape. This imparts a horizontal "sliding" effect to the volumes, allowing a "de-materialization" of the house's verticality.
On the "skin" of the building it is thus possible to understand the presence of the circulations and services that embrace, on the different floors, the central core and its structural "skeleton".
The construction method inverts a common situation. Inside, the white architectural concrete' stereotomy denounces the walls-beams that support the central core and extend the living room in the suspended balcony. Outside, the different plans are clad by cappotto and the alternation of colours is highlighted by the expressive game of volumes.
Finally, different openings framed by wood windows remind us of the unavoidable presence of the sea.

Hybrid Orange Strategies
by Pedro Gadanho
(see also Strangely enough, by Nuno Grande)

At a certain moment, JLCG stated that orange was the new black. But maybe it is the new white? At least, orange certainly confuses the mythology of white as an equivalent of abstraction. But is orange less abstract? Painters would say no. Colour symbologists would say otherwise. Perhaps. Yet – apart from uncannily contextual reasons – orange is, after all, just as provocative and sexy a way to stress and mediate and promote what is not so obvious in contemporary production.
Think. What may, ultimately, no longer be so obvious to architectural functional “analphabets”? The emotional force of the cantilever, the ironic memoirs of French movie-auteurs, the twisting of reality/landscape to fit the artificial architectural frame, the impact of the pure gaze, the expression of viscerality. Gibberish, in fact. Aesthetic pleasure in reverse. Or maybe not.
After all “else” has become aestheticized: aesthetic pleasure certainly has to come with a twist. Maybe that pleasure is the anarchic pleasure of subverting rules – those which only those people who master the rules can truly achieve (Of course I solely mean those glorified engineers known as ”architects” as opposed to “builders”, but if an erudite example is required just remember that column that doesn’t reach the ground under bonjour tristesse)
If you produce the unnamable, then you get away with crime. If your cantilever – or your concept – doesn’t fit the categories that legislations find fit, than maybe you can just get away with it. And subversion saves your project from just being other object deformed and amalgamated by convention. Legal and otherwise.
The latest Pritzker Prize, Paulo Mendes, would say that you have to create problems in order to solve them.
Welcome problems.

Weekend Retreat at Carreço

Location: Rua da Velosa, 121, Carreço, Viana do Castelo, Portugal
Preliminary Design: 2000; Final Design: 2001
Construction: 2002-2005
Architecture: Nuno Grande (1966) and Pedro Gadanho (1968)
Collaborators: Rita Cantante, Cristina Silva, Mariana Martins, Matilde Seabra
Engineering: NEWTON, Consultores de Engenharia, LDA (Structural); ENGILIMA, Projectistas e Consultores, LDA (Water and Sewage Networks, Heating);
MCP, Técnicas de Instalação (Electrical Networks)
Landscape Design: Nuno Grande and Pedro Gadanho
Client: Mário and Arminda Barbosa
Contractors: José Meixedo Novo, LDA (Stage 1 – Structures);
Daniel Ramos Pereira, LDA (Stage 2 – Finishings)
Construction supervisor: Paulo Alves (ENGILIMA)
Final cost: 300.000 Euros; 1000 Euros/m2
Built area: 300 m2