MONTE DAS BARROCAS
An extension and one fait-divers.

The Pavilion is a fait-divers.
Being an Architect brings along this kind of thing. To find a client looking for something that’s not the usual.
What luck! Something that’s built with the passing of time.
It had to be isolated. Music with no restrictions. Books, lots of books. A room for to house a passion for model trains. A small gym.
I brought up this small volume at the highest point of the property.
It levitates, as if something strange was there about to land. Or to take off? There, in the midst of scots pine.
A large space and two small ones, house the requirements of the brief.
Windows and terraces let in – selectively – the most amazing and never-the-same landscapes.
The smallest space becomes enormous, as it receives furniture, books, objects, sounds systems, machinery and… a surprising and passionate construction of model trains, with its own hills and mountains, stations and villages.
All that’s needed to enchant just about anyone.
It is a mixed type of construction with a language – or morphology- that’s intended to be different from that of the housing complex.
It is there, isolated, levitating and ready to go…dreaming

* monte alentejano: group of agricultural constructions in Alentejo province, usually built on a gentle hill.

Istanbul – Porto
March 29, 2019

Carlos Castanheira