QUARTO LIVRO
PARTS OF VILLAGES REMEMBERING OTHER VILLAGES, FAR AWAY IN MY MOTHER COUNTRY
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The parts of villages I have invented are buildings which appear to have been built and added to over a period of time. In these works individual interior volumes are often expressed outside by lean-to roofs breaking up the volume of the buildings, giving them the small scale and casual angularity of Portuguese villages.
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The Casa Mendes d'Almeida at Machava, a small town outside Lourenço Marques has an irregular H plan and a car-porch set at an angle. The house was designed to take on extra rooms at first floor level as the family expanded. It makes use of traditional chimneys but the spiral stair drum bends towards an eccentric skylight to become a strange personage in an otherwise vernacular scenario. |
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The Semis for Jose Pedro Gaivâo consist of two family houses. Each contains almost the same accommodation but the exterior volumes are manipulated to differentiate each house and personalise it. |
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The Group of Eight Houses for the Coop on Avenida Belgarde da Silva makes a communal central space set at right angles to the street. This central space is terminated by a stone mosaic mural based on the flag of the City of Lisbon. Each house has a small front garden and a backyard. The entrance to each house is under a spilt level room and next to it is a space for a car. Each such space is closed off from the backyard by a wall with a painted house flag each different from the other seven. The roof space over the intermediate room is a storeroom but in some houses this was later converted into an extra bedroom. |
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The Row Houses for the Co-op, a local housing co-operative, step down the street at Maxaquene. Each house is identified as a separate unit by a deep recession, the breaking down of roof surfaces, a screen wall which shelters the study downstairs facing the street and a slat-screened balcony.
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The Group of Twelve Houses for the Co-op on Avenida Miguel Bombarda, also forms a communal central space terminated by a stone mosaic mural of an arched and domed city. The houses step up the hillside and the roofs change pitch to accommodate the interior levels and differentiate each house. The circulation within each house centres around the stairs. The façades that face south-west are quite different from those that face north-east but the interior arrangement of each house is identical.
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These rows of houses soon got themselves nick-named "Comboios de Casas".
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