WORDS Gina Dionisio PHOTOS Ivo Tavares

Designed by Portuguese architecture studio Artequitectos, this family home is a meditation on place rather than a response to a brief, forming a dialogue between topography, material, and the act of living.

The clients, with a cultivated eye for architecture as cultural practice, envisioned a home that would be both contemporary and full of understated character – a space where pared-back gestures and honest materials engage directly with the landscape.

The retaining wall was the design’s point of departure. Defining the edge of the plot, it sets the building’s elevation, establishing a raised platform on which the house discreetly rests. In rhythm with its urban context, the single-level house unfolds inward, embracing a secluded garden while preserving the illusion of a two-storey volume.

A lower level, partly embedded into the terrain, contains the garage and an architectural stair that leads to the main living spaces. Social and private zones are clearly defined yet remain fluid, continually engaging with the outdoors. The living areas extend into the garden, dissolving the line between interior and constructed landscape.

At the core of the house lies an inner garden and pool, framed by the northern retaining wall. This contemplative heart is private, silent, intensely spatial.

Materiality ultimately defines the character of the house: exposed concrete defines structure and scale; thermally modified wood lends texture and warmth; while travertine punctuates spaces, adding a hint of elegance.

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WORDS Steve Smith and Laurence Dougier PHOTOS Nicolas Mathéus

About 120 kilometres south of Lisbon in the municipality of Grândola, Casa Azul – or Blue House – emerges quietly from the sun-drenched terrain of Portugal’s Alentejo region. This vast, sparsely populated area between the Tagus River and the Algarve covers nearly a third of the country’s surface, and is famed for its rolling hills, olive groves, cork forests and golden light. Alentejo is a land where the natural and built environments are in deep conversation – and Casa Azul, designed by Lisbon-based firm Bak Gordon, exemplifies this dialogue.

Grândola’s dry, arid landscape, rich in ancestral agricultural traditions and cork oak trees, provides the perfect setting for a house that is at once contemporary and rooted in local history. It’s here that four friends purchased adjoining plots of land with the vision of creating a shared retreat – a holiday home that feels as though it belongs to the terrain. Enter Ricardo Bak Gordon, the founder of Bak Gordon, who designed a home that feels less like an architectural intervention and more like a natural continuation of the land itself.

Casa Azul almost disappears into the horizon. If it weren’t for the reflective water tank that doubles as a pool and mirrors the surrounding cork trees and sky, the house might go unnoticed. Anchored to a long, linear wall that runs along the southern face of the site, the design follows the horizontal rhythm of the landscape. This wall – part architecture, part sculpture – acts as the spine of the house. On one side is the pool and arid scenery; on the other, a sequence of social spaces, fresco rooms and private quarters.

The house’s layout is cleverly broken into volumes of varying heights, mimicking the undulations of the Alentejo topography. These forms adapt to the terrain’s natural slope, while northern-facing elements are subtly set back to capture natural light and frame the sweeping views. At the heart of the home is a small interior courtyard that floods the space with daylight, offering quiet reflection – and cooler air during the region’s intense summer heat.

Materiality plays a central role in the building’s relationship with its environment. The entire house is clad in pigmented lime mortar – a finish that echoes the earthy reds and browns of the soil. This traditional technique, long used in southern Portugal, provides texture and warmth while minimising visual disruption to the landscape. A layer of locally sourced cork, harvested from the region’s Quercus suber trees, insulates the home, ensuring thermal comfort in the extreme climate. Inside, the same pigmented mortar continues across floors, ceilings and walls, creating a tactile continuity between indoors and out.

It’s not just the exterior that responds to the region’s harsh climate – the interior design is equally in tune with the rhythm of Alentejo life. The house comprises three bedrooms, each with its own en suite bathroom and terrace, ensuring privacy while maintaining a strong connection to the outdoors. A central living room, accessed via a corridor lined with vintage furniture and handmade ceramics, serves as a relaxed gathering space.

But the soul of Casa Azul lies in its fresco rooms – two semi-outdoor living areas located at opposite ends of the home. These rooms, inspired by traditional southern Portuguese architecture, serve as transitional zones between the interior and the exterior. The east-facing room features a wood-fired oven and a 12-person dining table,

perfect for long summer meals overlooking the pool. To the west, the second fresco room offers a tranquil spot to watch the sun set over cork-dotted hills. These spaces are where life happens – where conversations flow, children play, and time stretches out in the golden Alentejo light.

Designed during the pandemic and completed in 2021, Casa Azul represents more than just a holiday retreat. It is a meditation on climate, culture and community. Ricardo has skilfully balanced modern minimalism with a respect for local traditions, resulting in a home that offers both refuge and revelation. The architecture is not just about form, but about how people live – moving with the sun, seeking shelter from the heat, and gathering in shaded places to share meals and stories. With its masterful use of space, material and climate-responsive design, the house defines rural luxury not through excess, but through authenticity, simplicity and a deep sense of place. | bakgordon.com

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WORDS Gina Dionisio PHOTOS Ivo Tavares

Nestled in the rural village of Rua do Gondeiro, Casa da Levada by Tsou Arquitectos appears to emerge from the very fabric of its rural surroundings. The architecture of the single-family home, with its cork cladding and landscaped roof, reflects the architecture studio’s commitment to integrating the built environment with the existing terrain.

The approach to Casa da Levada is a cobbled walkway that slices through the rugged terrain, resembling a tectonic fault from above. This linear divide subtly delineates the home’s social and private realms, ensuring a seamless spatial flow. These living areas unfold around a courtyard, embracing it to form an inviting outdoor gathering space, where cantilevered overhangs elegantly frame the surrounding landscape.

Casa da Levada is a masterclass in thermal comfort and energy efficiency, seamlessly integrating cutting-edge climate control with thoughtful material choices. A high-efficiency heat pump powers the home’s underfloor heating and cooling system, ensuring a consistently comfortable interior. Ceramic flooring runs throughout, enhancing thermal responsiveness for effortless climate control year-round. In addition, a Controlled Mechanical Ventilation (CMV) system with a heat exchanger guarantees continuous fresh air circulation while minimising energy loss. Light plays an important role, with strategically placed glazing maximising natural illumination. External mechanical shading and blinds work in harmony to optimise solar gain in winter while preventing overheating in summer.

The considered technical choices and sustainable materials underscore Casa da Levada’s design, reflecting the architecture studio’s commitment to seamlessly integrating the house into its landscape. This philosophy is reflected in the use of cork panels for the exterior cladding, a landscaped roof that seamlessly extends the natural terrain, and a stone patio crafted from materials reclaimed from the site’s ruins. The design of the patio’s stonework follows a stereotomy that repurposes existing granite, reinforcing the ethos of sustainability and resourcefulness. | tsouarquitectos.com

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WORDS Laurence Dougier PHOTOS Nicolas Mathéus

The stars begin to fade, and a softness envelopes the sky in the hilly Alentejo landscape. Dawn is magical here. Towards the east, light pierces the sky like an arrow; a few minutes later, the sun washes across the pastures and the cork oak groves. At this time, this contemporary building seems to awaken, vibrating under a golden glow that’s echoed by the wood cladding on the facade and interior walls.

Cleverly concealed in the rural landscape, the home designed by Lisbon-based architect Gonçalo Bonniz blends into the hills thanks to its chromatic hues of grey slate, raw concrete and Kebony timber, which frame the huge windows. Anything that’s superfluous has been removed from the structure and pared back to the essentials, lightening the form to emphasise the substance (To explore other architectural gems in Portugal, visit our Portuguese architecture collection).

The interiors were designed by Emma Pucci and Valentina Pilia, founders of the textile showroom and design studio Flores, also based in Portugal’s capital city. “We first defined a colour palette for the project,” say Emma and Valentina. “The tones were inspired by the warm earth hues and ochres of the Alentejo, the old cork oaks and their bark, and Verdigris; we also used off-white and cream.”

This first step involved selecting materials, with a brief to be as natural, simple and local as possible, and to avoid anything artificial. Choosing the actual decor came later, with the idea of “a communion with nature” always top of mind. As a result, each object and each piece of furniture has been carefully thought through. “The challenge was to use materials and know-how that are emblematic of Portugal, but with a contemporary angle – so we chose timeless pieces that we’d like in our own homes.”

Employing age-old techniques, the best local craftsmen were used extensively in the fitout of the house, creating everything from solid-wood tables and junco lampshades (a material usually used for baskets) to a unique colour range for the crockery. They also used flax linen – easy to source, as the local weaver’s husband grows it, picks it and processes it in his garden. Same goes for the wool: it comes from the neighbour’s sheep and is dyed naturally with avocado or onion. The narrative of nature as inspiration was further followed with fabric poufs filled with granules of local cork, occasional tables in glazed ceramics, and reworked traditional Portuguese Arraiolos rugs.

The decor serves to warm up the serene, almost monastic architecture, adding a soothing atmosphere. A large common area allows for moments to be shared with family and friends, with the six simply decorated rooms that lead off it maintaining the sense of cosiness. “The minimalist, frugal spirit favours a demanding simplicity,” say the two interior designers.

The kitchen, with its central island, is designed to accommodate a chef as well as guests, and a large dining table and two lounges complete the living spaces. Everything has been considered to encourage interaction, with the idea of unwinding, and of focusing on substance. In spring, for example, the owner favours meditative retreats (so a yoga room is available). In summer, he offers cooking classes using vegetables from the garden. A spring on the property provides irrigation for the orchard and the vegetable gardens, which are cultivated following permaculture methods.

In this natural setting, as vast as it is impressive, the colour palette of the landscape comes alive with the seasons: populated by yellow flowers in spring, arid in summer, and grey and chilly in winter. It’s a constant passage of time that invites contemplation and stillness. “And there’s no contemplation more beautiful than the constant movement of colour in these fields,” say Emma and Valentina. florestextilestudio.com | gbarquitectos.pt

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Casa “Pátios de Pétalas” is a fusion between urban landscape and nature – with an organic design reminiscent of a flower in bloom.

Situated in Gondomar, Porto, the double-storey house known as “Pátios de Pétalas” was designed by Portuguese architect Sandra Micaela Casinha.

The architect’s selection of construction materials such as glass, aluminium, and wood accentuate the organic form of this unique home. The walls gracefully unfold like the delicate petals of a white flower, underscoring its minimalist design.

The ground floor is characterised by the curves and counter-curves of an interior wall. This distinctive architectural feature seamlessly guides visitors through the various interconnected spaces within the house. The curved staircase serves as the central focal point of the home and connects the flow of the house from one level to the next.

Upstairs, the house is enveloped by the gentle curves of the “flower petals,” which give rise to a series of inviting patios leading to the three bedrooms.

Reflecting the minimalistic architectural features, the house’s interior design embraces a muted colour palette (except from the children’s bathroom which is a delightful rosey pink). The carefully chosen furniture further enhances the sense of simplicity and tranquillity in the space. Lamps and vases crafted from bamboo and wicker, as well as solid wood elements, introduce a touch of nature. Neutral textiles are predominantly used throughout, with an occasional pop of soft colour to complement and accentuate specific areas like the kitchen.

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