Efficient House

We were contracted to rehabilitate and reconvert a house in Paredes, Portugal, to make it an efficient house according to an environmental, energetic, aesthetic and functional approach. The reconversion of buildings from the 1980s is a complex task that involves the analysis of the structure and its alteration in order to be compatible with the current regulations and comfort requirements. In addition, it is necessary to reformulate all glass windows in order to take advantage of the passive solar energy through the respective external sun protection controlled through domotics. Likewise, all exterior walls and roof have to be fully altered in order to be thermally efficient, and all infrastructures adapted to the new standards of an environmentally friendly and ecological architecture. In the interior the spaces were designed to be ample and to see the beautifull landscape. A mezzanine is created that not only takes provides a magnificent tridimensional promenade as generates a column of rising air that is used from the thermal point of view to cool the house in the summer and warm it in the winter. On ground floor we find the kitchen, living room and dining room open to the outside. On the first floor the rooms and the rooftop in open space. Finally, above the roof, the poetry of space arrives in the form of a hut. On the outside the garden is a simple meadow and a porch welcomes people and automobiles. Sometimes drawing is erasing, being succinct, and using the right elements effectively. In this house the exercise was this, to be efficient, to use only the essential.