At the end of the garden of a house designed by the architect Pedro Ramalho in the 1970s, built in Porto’s Foz Velha neighbourhood, the aim was to take advantage of a lost space, formerly a laundry and storage area, now fallen into disuse, to create an outdoor living room, sheltered from the northern wind and the strong summer sun that blazes down on the garden around lunchtime. Use was made of the existing wall, perpendicular to the plot’s partition walls, to serve as the supporting structure for a large table built in reinforced concrete with the standard size of a piece of formwork (2.50×1.25), offset by a small square pillar at 2/3 which partially diverts the weight of the structure towards the ground. The same wall supports an asymmetrical porch made in IPE profiles, defining and delimitating the grapevine and providing shade for the space. The metal profiles are painted in primary yellow, the colour of the lemons hanging from the tree which remains in the house from its origins. This is a clear allusion to Le Corbusier’s Maison le Lac, which takes on a childlike, nostalgic dimension. There is no lake, but the breeze and the sea air of the Atlantic just down the street pervade the space and fill the meals for friends and family with memories of a city both coastal and rural.
project:
outdoor dining room
location:
porto, portugal
date:
2015
building area:
10 m2
architecture:
bárbara rangel, nuno brandão costa
collaborators:
cíntia pires
structural engineer:
ana isabel vale (abprojectos)
photographs:
andré cepeda