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The Serenely Introverted Simple House from Aires Mateus

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Huge reddish wooden sliding doors on each side open or close the Simple house from Aires Mateus.

The stark building is in a dry region with olive groves, cork trees and sunflowers in the bare landscape of the Alentejo near the Atlantic coast of Portugal.

Each side is only accessed in the center, by a full height sliding door. Although starkly modern, the introverted architecture of thick white walls and few windows is traditional in this region, partly a response to climate, and partly cultural; dating back to the Ottoman Empire.

Empty cubes throughout the house are part of its strange introverted charm.

As if scooped out from a marble cube, the Simple House is all white throughout its monastic interior.

Unremittingly white both outside and throughout; the walls are plastered white, the door frames are steel, painted white, and throughout, the floor is pale creamy-white marble.

The house has a moody mysterious introversion. It is cool and distant.

For access to the bedrooms, an entire wall opens. The giant steel-framed glass doors pivot around a center-hinge.

This way the bedrooms can be completely open or closed.

Only unseen courtyards bring natural light in but no view out of the windowless rooms.

A corner courtyard illuminates the bathroom.

Another corner courtyard is so completely devoid of stimulation as to make the building seem almost like a hospital or a retreat from sensory overload.

But the absolute simplicity of the cube house also provides a perfect frame for the changing light on the landscape.

So that when ready to take in the view, it can be consumed in a big gulp.

Just these simple blocks of marble form the step up, throughout, even to the simple galley kitchen.

Changing levels mark the different rooms inside, and a simple block of marble accesses each with a single stair.

The interior rooms can be separated from the outside with full-height sliding glass doors.

The result is a building that remains open only to the sky in its four corners and, a very long, hot, enervating walk away; the final relief of an equally mysterious swimming pool.