In 2022, “going out”, going out again, has become the watchword after two years of pandemic: in conceptual terms, the literal opposite to what the mission of a house is supposed to be.
The houses we have been selecting through the last twelve months, from Mexico to Portugal, from Argentina to Wales via Greece, have instead told us a lot about this specific subject. About how it has meant leaving the city and diving back into the landscape, but also returning to learn from that landscape, so fragile and endangered today, in a respectful dialogue. But also of how staying in the city has taken on new meanings and new ways of living, about establishing new connections with outdoor spaces, sometimes about finding “home” in unexpected places.
In Portugal, the extension of a rural building as a brutalist flirt
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NaMora in Portuguese has two meanings: on the one hand it indicates the location of the intervention, "in Mora" ("Na Mora"), from the name of the site where the property is located; on the other it means "flirt" ("namora"). It is around this play on words that architects Filipe Pina and David Bilo have designed, in the small village of Gonçalo at the foot of the Serra da Estrela, the extension of a rural dwelling with which the new construction dialogues "flirting" amiably, in harmony with the surrounding landscape. Read the full article here
Designing contrasts: Villa Pavlovic by Neo Arhitekti
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The Belgrade studio NEO_Arhitekti, formed by Snežana Vesnić, Vladimir Milenković and Tatjana Stratimirović, has been working for many years with the Pavlovic family, owners of the textile company Textil. In response to the request for a weekend retreat, the architects decided to balance closure and openness in this compact volume with round ends. Read the full article here
A villa in Slovakia winks at rationalism
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In a quiet residential neighbourhood of Žilina, punctuated mainly by single-family dwellings surrounded by gardens, the building designed by Plural studio from Bratislava fits in with measured composure and in conformity with the neighbouring volumes without, however, renouncing its contemporary and sophisticated character in comparison with the more traditional neighbouring constructions. Read the full article here
Prefab tiny houses in the forests of Portugal
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