Inspiring home of the week: The patio house in Grândola, Alentejo, Portugal

Described as a Porch in a landscape by the architect, this angular home with crisp white walls, inside and out, sits in the middle of a vast green space

It may look like a rather futuristic house, with a flat roof and plenty of rooms extending from the main centre of the building, and plenty of huge sliding glass doors, but this building has been lovingly designed with a family in mind.

The fluid design – with seven bedrooms (one a master and two additional suites) and common areas, including a TV room and a swimming pool – allows for family time and privacy, which was the only vague brief the architects, Promontorio, had from the client. But what they did specify is that they did not want a patio house.

The house is tucked away from the city, set in a swathe of greenery with cork and olive trees, and has seamlessly partnered the rural environment with modern life. It is neither overbearing for the landscape nor too simplistic to be habitable.

Q Please tell us a little about your practice: how big is it, when was it founded, etc

Our company was founded in 1990 and at the moment we are a practice of 60 architects, planners, landscape architects, interior designers and graphic designers.

A What is your practice known for?

A: In matter of principles we are known to maintain ethics in architectonic decisions – in the current practice, to bring an urban and environmental integration of our works, as well as an integration of other arts in our buildings.

We look for building's both robust and lasting, and the feasibility of the projects and the works. Architecture for us is a compromise, beyond the client and the general conditions, architecture is, on one hand, a compromise with environment, city, history, people expectations and intellectual existence; on the other hand, architecture shows off the knowledge of an era, the capacity and imagination of the architects and the understanding of a certain time. One can not runaway or hide the work that everyone can see and appreciate. Architecture is responsibility, knowledge, talent and decision.

Q: How would you sum up the project in five words?

A: A Porch in the landscape.

Q: What was the brief for this project?

A: The briefing was simple, just a villa in the middle of a property in the countryside surrounded by cork trees and olive trees, combining common areas (tv-room, living rooms, dining room) and private areas (6/7 bed-rooms including 1 master suite and 2 suites) and a swimming pool – not too close to the house. No actual wish list, just some scattered images from different environments as references, but above all a certain openness to make way and discuss while moving forward. The client's wish and expectations were key as they were the take off, the departing point to the concept. But they were not listed. What the client brings is the base, the raw material, exactly like a model or a landscape for a painter, a sculptor or a poet.

Q: What did you hope to solve as you designed this home?

A: As architects or artists we always want to summarise all questions and come up with a new synthesis and a small project can work perfectly to release that hope. In addition, art has always been produced and read in different layers, some are intentional and some are inspirations that the artists decide to take as risk in its proposal.

Having said this, I would say that we have tried to integrate different levels of perception of the space and we have tried to balance the harmony between these levels: traditional rural environment with modern life, to reflect the presence of a dwelling with a countryside background, to balance privacy and isolation with life in common – family and friends sharing; to establish the minimum framing – walls, doors, trees and bushes – for the feeling of freedom: feeling light/weightless and protected simultaneously.

Q: What makes this space unique?

A: Maybe it is the weightiness of the gravity that one can feel when seeing the suspended walls of the patio – walls with no columns. It may also be the contrast between the fortress look, when everything is closed, and the visual transparency and physical fluidity, when the large doors are open. Actually, the house can be seen as a group of private blocks/bedrooms linked by a porch that forms an open patio.

Q: What was your inspiration for this project?

A: The patio as a concept because we found it necessary to create a centrality, an intimate centrality, that could generate a private and autonomous open-air area in the house. The other inspiration was the typical arrangement of the rural settlements – dwellings and warehouses around a courtyard – that define the traditional and wise occupation of the land.

Q: What was the toughest issue you encountered when this building was being designed and built?

A: The project and the construction were not complicated to release. We always fight with the uncertainty of the final result but despite the contractor misunderstandings or our request for late changes in the site, the process has been quite calm.

Q: What do you wish you could change in hindsight?

A: Just small details, I think. In general, we would not change much.

Q: What sort of experience do you hope people using this space have?

A: The experience of having several separated living rooms that are, at the same time, visually connected through the glass walls of the central patio, which is also column free. One can be alone without being isolated.

The other interesting experience is the feeling of an inhabited porch when all the sliding doors are hidden inside the external walls and one can walk through alternating, interior and exterior spaces, sun and shade, warm and freshness, air flowing, sounds flowing. It is the feeling of having a minimum shelter on a friendly environment.

Q: Please add anything else you feel is important

A: Just as a joke: in the briefing the client mentioned that did not want a patio house. The client learnt during the process to want it.