The house was built on land that was formerly farmland, with a good view over the Atlantic Ocean in a small town in northern Portugal, Moledo do Minho, belonging to the municipality of Caminha. To Souto de Moura, site characteristics are more important than the customer's requirements, especially where, as in Moledo, the program needs is a conventional list of rooms and the place is highly demanding: a vast expanse of a steep hillside overlooking the Atlantic coastline, terraced agricultural banks by an approximate height of 1.5 m, supported by the containment walls of stone.

Concept

By observing the evolution of Souto de Moura's research seems obvious that constantly come to a kind of pattern based on a floor of a rectangular shape with two or three sides and a blind forehead, usually formed by a wall of stained glass whose elements are aligned with the facade main house. The space distribution and service areas occupy the interior generated. This typology is derived from the idea of a release with a series of enclosed spaces that generate functionally hierarchical.

Souto de Moura uses an outcropping of rock in the back of the house as an extra visual reaffirming further the link between the environment and the interior of the house, which also gives the feeling of shelter. This is accompanied by the construction of reinforced concrete walls coated in stone, physically introducing the existence of this element and imposing rough. At the front between two blind walls lies a large sliding glass overlooking the ocean, behind which lie the different areas of the house: a terrace, kitchen, dining room, three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a cloakroom, dressing room, patio and a service corridor that runs across the building facade that faces the mountain.