Within a dense urban fabric, at the center of Ponta Delgada, the design answers to the program of an extremely compact single-family house with two floors, where the lower floor accommodates a single social area, while the two small bedrooms are located at the upper level. 

Façade design

With only 4.20m at the front, with no space for urban pedestrian circulation space, the facade follows a child’s imaginary of a house drawing: one door and one window. In that sense, the main facade is exclusively the boundary between interior and exterior, with no reason for any other relation between them, besides standing in-between.

Program and layout 

The program develops without the need of transitioning or dividing spaces. The only social area of the house gains in depth when it finds the garden at the end of the space. The garden establishes the balance between the house and a private addition at the end of the lot. 

At the upper floor, the east-facing bedroom gets a terrace, from where one can contemplate the houses that make the urban form, so characteristic of the neighborhood.

Skylights on a pitched roof

The necessity to simulate greater spatial amplitude is confronted with the skylights in the pitched roof, receiving and spreading natural throughout the interior, working as a diaphragm, increasing the vertical perspective.