A diagonal villa “pieds dans l’eau”
PROJECT
The Portuguese studio Frari has played with the spaces and colour scheme on a small plot in Aveiro In Aveiro, a Portuguese town of more than 80,000 inhabitants, a family entrusted the construction of their home to architect Maria Joao Fradinho, from the Frari studio, whose mantra is “the humanisation of architecture”, or the intelligent organisation of spaces. As architect Fradinho explains in an interview with Ville&Casali,
“The villa is in an established residential area with a low population density as it is part of a partially-completed development plan. The structure of the building is made up of an assortment of disparate blocks that form a cohesive whole”.
It is a two-storey house. The first floor houses the communal area with entrance, kitchen and dining area, living room and bathroom, as well as a double garage, laundry room and equipment room. The second floor boasts a suite with private bathroom and dressing room, as well as two further bedrooms accessed by a communal space, another dressing room, a bathroom and a study area.
The limited size of the plot forced the Frari studio to play with the spaces and colours (black and white). Constructed on the border of the plot, the house is built on a diagonal line, allowing the building to be separated into two parts with façades of different widths. The separation of the two floors and the removal of the eastern part of the space made it possible to create a home consisting of three blocks. “Each block was treated like a box,” explains the Portuguese architect, “with a uniform perimeter and with the upper parts longitudinally open. Both are closed by windows to mark the north and south ends”. The swimming pool is located at the back of the property, and a “pieds dans l’eau” (“feet in the water”) effect was created thanks to the staggered nature of the blocks, with the reflections of the water illuminating a console table inside the villa.
In Aveiro, a Portuguese town of more than 80,000 inhabitants, a family entrusted the construction of their home to architect Maria Joao Fradinho, from the Frari studio, whose mantra is “the humanisation of architecture”, or the intelligent organisation of spaces.