No Comments »

A Red House in Portugal – Casa Cabeço

• Tweet

• Tweet

This house by MSB arquitectos clings for its life to a scrubby hillside in Madeira, Portugal.

Built in concrete that is coloured an endearingly lush and yet rustic red, it makes a bold statement.

The design is plagued by a familiar problem, according to the architects: the view is to the North, while the sun is from the South.

Cantilevered out from the hill, a gigantic deck has an unusual wood-panelled “ceiling” underneath.

The deck supports the upper level of the house which houses the public spaces and is the entrance level for driving onto the site.

This is the level that you drive into. The grass creates the impression of flat land next to you as you arrive: a relief on such a steep site.

But in fact it is the green roof of the lower building.

The skylights mounted in the grass give it away.

These skylights bring light down into the bedrooms and bathrooms that are partially dug into the hillside.

Next to them, under the entrance floor, the underside of the deck is beautifully finished, as if to one day become an interior ceiling… One wonders how this will weather?