White bricks for Extrastudio’s terraced houses in Portugal

Architects: Extrastudio Project name: Parede Townhouses Location: Parede, Portugal Size: 677 sqm

In the coastal town of Parede, in the Lisbon metropolitan area, Extrastudio has explored a building typology and material vocabulary that are unusual for the local context, in a project combining the economic benefits of collective housing with the autonomy and intimacy of a single-family home. The work reinterprets the terraced house model – which originated in the United Kingdom and is found in Portugal almost exclusively in the Porto area – updating it to meet the needs of flexibility and accessibility of contemporary living. A calibrated play of volumes marks the sequence of seven units on two floors above the street level, arranged around internal patios and with private gardens at the rear, echoing the essential, “box-like” features of vernacular architecture. In the facades, white brick instead of the usual plastered walls typical of the area brings back the material memory of this “imported” building typology, contextualising it with the candid hues of the South.