Casa M

Casa M | Algarve, Portugal | 2023
[A-lab Architects]

Integration and articulation with the surroundings

Located on the Algarve coast, Casa M stands proudly on a village hill, overlooking the ocean. The design carefully considers the local climate—hot summers, humid winters, and a prevailing Atlantic breeze. As a townhouse on a narrow street, Casa M optimizes its space across half-floors to harmonize with neighboring volumes. Bringing traditional architectural principles and vernacular expression to the contemporary world, Casa M beautify blends with its surroundings.

Sustainability and Eco-efficiency

Casa M prioritizes a sustainable design by integrating both passive and active systems, optimizing light, shade, and natural ventilation to significantly reduce energy consumption, eliminating the need for air conditioning.

Eco-efficiency is ingrained in the design, with the incorporation of an interior courtyard. The architectural design guides natural lighting and ventilation on a 19-meter deep plot, ensuring climatic comfort.

Natural ventilation is generated by the “stack” effect of the stairs and the ventilated skylight in the interior courtyard of the house. The sea breeze, admitted at the lower level, gradually rises to the openings in the skylight, driving natural ventilation throughout the dwelling. During the summer, solar gains from the skylight are controlled by exterior shading, while in winter, they act as a significant source of passive solar gains.

To ensure acoustic comfort, dense fabric curtains are used at various points in the house, balancing the hardness of materials and the fluidity of spaces. These solutions also provide flexibility in spatial partitioning, allowing, for example, the enclosure of the living room to create a cozy “micro-climate” during winter, or the visual separation of the private zone of the house, such as the bedrooms.

Additionally, the design concept seeks to streamline production chains by minimizing materials and details, ensuring easier maintenance over time. The ultimate goal is to create comfortable living conditions without unnecessary complexity.

Spatial coherence and living qualities

The house emphasizes outdoor living, with views considered from where people spend most of their time – cooking and gathering around the table with family and friends. The kitchen plays a central role, extending into the dining table and veranda lounge.

The predominant al fresco living, embracing the outdoor environment without compromising the climate control of the rest of the house, relies on a windowed partition at the inner boundary of the kitchen that can be closed off from the rest of the house. In summary, movable partitions like interior windows and curtains play a fundamental role in Casa M, functioning as gates to regulate heat retention, privacy, and adapt to various year-round uses.

Spatial continuity is achieved through a single, uninterrupted terrazzo floor that extends seamlessly from the parking to the terrace, encompassing stairs, wainscoting, and the living area. Dense fabric curtains balance the mineral elements of the materials, giving fluidity and ensuring acoustic comfort.

Casa M’s design balances visual and spatial extension with the organization of comfortable living functions. The quiet white facade gains expression embracing smooth and textured surfaces, mass and voids. The effect is achieved through the variation of rendering techniques, the design of the perforated gates and the strategic incorporation of breeze blocks in a graphic interplay of light and shadow. The house offers a canvas reflecting the changes in nature and weather and a stage on which everyday life unfolds.

This thoughtful design not only revitalizes local aesthetics but also serves the dual function of offering ventilation, shade, and privacy—a contemporary reinterpretation of traditional construction methods. Overall, we seek answers that do not depend on fleeting trends. We explore a contemporary aesthetic rooted in the place, establishing connections with the past, present and enduring over time. Text description by the architects.