Description
This unique and spectacular house is built in rammed earth with earth from the excavations themselves, with roofs in reinforced concrete slab and wood. The thermal control of the roof is ensured by a 5 cm layer of water protected by insulating slabs, with a fan device designed to increase water evaporation during the summer, cooling the water and the house, and during the winter this air box remains closed so that the insulation of the plates protects from the cold. The house is self-sufficient. It has its own water through a capture hole, electricity from photovoltaic panels, hot water through solar panels, a cesspool for the sewers and central heating with a diesel boiler. It also has a cistern for rainwater collection, for the irrigation network and eventual reserve. The 360ha Montado that surrounds the house, takes us to the silence and to the senses that this Alentejo provokes. "Here, everything is where it should be. The house is organic and you can feel it on your skin" "The place, the rammed earth construction and the program are the roots of the design of this house, whose program was defined in response to the needs and desires of the family, materialized from the beginning in a list of "wants", not only functional but also the environment of the house itself. Throughout the process of designing the project and its construction, the house benefited from the close collaboration of the owners of the work, a couple of artists, she being a ceramist and he a sculptor and painter. evidence due to the climatic aspects, the defense of the Alentejo heat, creating an environment with thermal inertia, and also because it is a traditional technique suitable for a building with only one floor. situated within a large property, constituted strong stimuli for the definition of the project that is a response to the surrounding nature." In Bartolomeu Costa Cabral 18 Works / ed. Paulo Providencia, Pedro Bahia. - Porto: Circo de Ideias, 2019 (2nd ed.).
