ÉVORA, PORTUGAL 2000-2005
In an allotment of uncertain origins, a house, erected without a blueprint over the course of many years, showed various construction problems. The sum of its parts insisted on maintaining its independence and the whole revealed a number of internal problems. The proposal, requested in order to proceed with planning permission for the work, consisted of little more than the process of demolishing the excess parts.
Roofs were dismantled and the overlaying tiles kept, thoroughly insulating the roofing. The garage converted into a room and an internal room was demolished, making way for the patio around which the new house nestles and arranges itself. A rectangular limit came to fence off this twisted form, drawing porches that join and shelter the house’s apertures. Between the interior, almost unchanged, and the exterior faced with immediacy of the neighbouring houses, there is still a width, which is inhabitable and gives the house back a more reserved, mediterranean feel.
Elements have survived that were part of the previous spaces, such as the fireplace which now adorns the porch to the South, conjuring up memories. The flooring, in recycled wood, gives a dense and textured support to these ‘betweeriors’, contrasting with the austerity of the internal cement flooring.
The work of Fernanda Fragateiro has served to condense these shadow-spaces, inspired by the text ‘L’attente L’oubli’ by Maurice Blanchot, where the lone character constructs dialogues between two imagined heteronymous characters. Just like this duplex house.