September 17, 2024

Pátio do Meco by Fábio Ferreira Neves

Pátio do Meco, a Setúbal home designed in 2018 by Fábio Ferreira Neves, maintains its original identity by preserving its typical Mediterranean elements. The minimal exterior is designed as different volumes positioned according to privacy needs. A verandah connects the main home, where social activities take place, with the private rooms along the perimeter. For shade, the patio, which maintains its original scale, contains Mediterranean elements, such as a well and shading reeds.

Charming village with traditional terracotta-tiled roofs and modern white architecture.

Setúbal home retains its historical character

The Pátio do Meco, located in the historical centre of Aldeia do Meco, Portugal, is a family home designed in 2018. The project, led by designer Fábio Ferreira Neves, involved retaining the original identity and appearance of the main house and its patio, which had long adhered to the vernacular common scale.

In designing the home, the boundary of the plot is defined by the new house and its extension, which is composed of minimal and abstract volumes. The layouts are separated according to privacy needs, with social areas located in the main building and private and technical functions organized along the perimeter of the enclosure.

Modern, minimalist living room with wood paneling, plush seating, and wooden floors.

Minimal volumes create private spaces

Pátio do Meco recreates its historical character with a minimal exterior arranged in different volumes which informs both the interior and the exterior layout.

“In a region where architectural forms grow horizontally, and based on eminently abstract volumes, the project was developed in a large patio, recreating the courtyard house as an autonomous object integrated into a tutelary element: the main house,” said Neves.

A modern dining room with a wooden table, geometric pendant lights, and concrete ceiling beams.

“The main house of the plotting was driven by a double objective: to transpose the perimeter of the ancient house and to gather all the social areas of the programme in a continuous and permanent relation with the verandah space.”

For easy access and connection, guests enter through the verandah, which references both privacy and openness to the street. The verandah then becomes a path of movement to all other spaces — social and private — while the kitchen of the main house becomes the centrepiece.

Minimalist kitchen with sleek white cabinets, wooden floors, and recessed lighting.

“The kitchen, which finds logics of privacy and sharing in the relations between the compartments, is the project nucleus,” the studio explained.

Neves explained how the home sets priorities for privacy needs. The architect transformed the kitchen — which was originally the living room — and created new connections to the occupiable spaces oriented towards the south.

The patio and verandah set priorities previously established by the architecture, such as typical Mediterranean elements like the well and shading reeds gain prominence.

A minimalist bedroom with wooden floors, large windows, and tasteful modern furniture.

Building off of the main footprint

Building off the pre-existing footprint, the patio anchors the site to its context and is oriented towards the South.

“The patio is oriented to the South, as usual, to find the maximum of light and better regulate the microclimate,” said Neves.

Alongside the clean concrete aggregate, harmonious lightness is brought into spaces that were previously disconnected from one another through its continued white materiality.

Minimalist architecture with an illuminated olive tree in the foreground against a clear sky.

“One of the biggest challenges of the intervention was, on one hand, to preserve the street fronts – inserting the project with discretion in a consolidated nucleus of historical character – and, on the other, to transform it into the patio, which was an agricultural warehouse,” said Neves.

According to the studio, the building of the home was conceived with solidity and permanence, ensuring the urban logic within its context.

A modern residential complex with clean lines, a pool, and lush greenery at sunset.

“The urban logic of enclosing the perimeter of the plot, composing it as an autonomous backyard, and the morphology of the surface that was actually reinforced in the present project,” the architect explained.

With a nod to its historical context, the project and the reconstruction were anchored to the site with minimal intervention — anchoring the site to its context in a single line, open only to the north onto the main street.