The Oeiras House is a residence in Lisbon, Portugal, designed by the architecture studio OODA in 2024. The project was shaped by the size of the site and existing natural elements, ensuring a seamless connection between the interior and the surrounding environment. A rationalistic geometry is employed, emphasising the architectural and environmental values.
The Oeiras House, by Portuguese architecture firm OODA, is a response to the inherent geographic conditions. Positioned on a slope, the house’s design cleverly integrates with its environment, reflecting one of the firm’s trademark methods. According to the architects, the topography provided the raw material for the house, ensuring the domestic space benefits from sunlight and plentiful environmental features favoured living conditions.
“We believe natural and contextual conditions become useful in creating an open, interesting, and intrinsic environment, implanted at a higher level,” the designers said.
Initial design considerations revolved around a comprehensive understanding of the locale and site’s characteristics. From this insight, the designers opted for a rational and geometric volume, which took advantage of the raised site and overcame otherwise undesirable environmental factors.
The building’s design includes several elevated masses around a central courtyard that serves as the primary focal point, with kitchen, dining and living rooms wrapped around the “regulating and distributing” space.
This central atrium is complemented by a scenic pool, enhancing both the aesthetics and the interior lighting conditions by reflecting light into the space. A sense of fluidity and openness underpins the design approach and is further underscored by the sliding glass doors, allowing free movement between the indoor spaces, patio, and surrounding vegetation.
Individual sleeping quarters connect to the central courtyard, designed with a “transparent and absent spatiality that dematerializes” as it continues into the home’s entrance.
“The simple maxim ‘space beyond’ underpins our architectural philosophy and is evident in the allocation of the residence’s social versus private areas,” the designers said.
At one end of the house lies the more individual quarters while at the other end of the courtyard resides the living and kitchen spaces, blending almost seamlessly.
Moreover, the residence was conceived with vertical connections to the roof, achieved using cross-sectional diagonal movements that guide users along sloped paths that appear as pitched rooftops.
OODA approached The Oeiras House project with a strong ethos of unity, existing in the design’s exterior and interior.
“The materiality we choose encapsulates the total and global unity of the home, closing off each volume in its precise and exacting form,” the designers said.
Externally, the house features orthogonal volumes clad in a light grey block, similarly applied to the rooftop’s smooth pitch. The neutral tone of the exterior highlights the surrounding greenery while offering users views from an accessible rooftop to the landscape below.
The exterior’s continuity is mirrored throughout the house’s interior, where the same material that clads the home’s exterior has been roughly applied to the walls of the courtyard and provides a minimal backdrop to the home’s inner workings.
This coherence in materiality is a key aspect of the project and reflects OODA’s general architectural philosophy, which seeks to contribute and improve its broader environment.
To that end, where the architects approach architecture’s transformative potential while always considering the stability and quality of a space, according to the designers.