Forte House, Santo Tirso, Porto Real Estate Project, Portuguese Interior Architecture Restoration Photos
Forte House in Santo Tirso
12 Jan 2023
Architects: pema studio
Location: Santo Tirso, Oporto, Portugal

Photos: Ivo Tavares Studio
Forte House, Portugal
A well-established urban residential area in the city of Santo Tirso is the location of Forte House – The intervention is inevitably a reflex response to this complex and challenging context. Urban plot, confined between neighbors and whose visible confrontations had little or nothing significant from the landscape point of view.

The pre-existence, heavily degraded and with little constructive value, lived in the typical and uninteresting duality between the street and the back courtyard. Moving away from this typology represents an attitude that is both logical and challenging, but above all, necessary and effective.
The intervention starts from a massive block that, impertinently, detaches from the limits and mimics the land plot outline. From here, by subtraction, the voids are defined, and the program is intuitively accommodated between patios in a constant refusal of a direct relationship with the exterior perimeter.

The house is designed in a complex balance between the creation of a dense and closed fortress and the reinterpretation of the typical patio house, looking for a protected oasis, in its intimate relationship with the sky. The name – Forte – denounces the mandatory theme of privacy...