living in porto

The core of this vision is therefore to start with what we have. That includes the actually built parts - in this case the facade in a gap between two houses in the core of Porto, Portugal - but it also means to preserve the underlying structures of the city.

In this case we pay tribute to that by first forming an outer skin, shaped after the traditional houses of Porto, with a setback on the top floor. Inside that the new spaces are wrapped in a second, inner skin. The attributes and interaction of those two skins allow the house to address another crucial factor for the future: It can adapt to climatic factors, making it a environmentally and socially sustainable building.