Hidden Villa

When you walk in Lisbon and pass by the old wall with garage gates you might not expect that this wall can hide a villa. Modest outside and rich in the interior, excavated in landscape and full of light. The narrow tunnel of the entrance leads to the main tall space with oculus in the dome. Room for eating is subtracted from the main space; it is a big opening slightly above the main room and it acts as a stage. The library is the most sacral space for concentration and it reminds the church’s apsida, light and peace. The bathroom is a tall cone space where the light falls like water. The last space is achievable only for masters, it is a bedroom. This is the only room which has a huge window and access to the garden with the view on the whole city lying below.

The collection of spaces is connected and united by the gap going through all of the rooms and creating different light conditions. The main purpose of the studio and of the project was the reflection upon Architecture on the topic of a house with five spaces. It was a search for the relationships between the house and the city, between the house’s spaces themselves, and a search for the richness of the personal experience. During the work, we avoided using the rooms’ names but were operating with the spaces’ functions: a place to gather, a place to rest, a place to wash, a place to read and a place to eat. The project has become a solution for the reflection Architecture as a definition of memory, upon Architecture as a possibility of intervention, upon Architecture as an opportunity of transformation.