Designer / Agency
João Cepeda Architect
Categpory
Residential Building
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House in Ribeira dos Moinhos
Project Présentation
Amidst a mountainous severity, a small stream river cuts its presence.
Time and climate – the ultimate artisans.
From this panorama, large blocks of sawn local granite appear, sheltering a small house.
Just like the river, this house represents a (brief) moment of “reconciliation” with Nature.
As a founding essence, all of its ‘humid’ spaces emphasize a feeling of refuge and nostalgia – like an ‘elegy’ to the memory of the region’s (almost lost) thermal theme.
The bathroom spaces and a ‘rocky patio’ complete a simple residential program: a private bedroom secluded to the rear, and a large living room facing east, and the (locally called) “ribeira dos Moinhos”.
The idea of a unified but fragmentable space.
An environment with its own character – although, in a way, anonymous and banal.
A precise design answer for a specific use – albeit ‘open’ and (almost) ambiguous.
All these premises seek, not the (vulgar) principle of the ‘form that follows function’, but rather the design answer that allows for use, and that can (occasionally) be freed from it.
After all, as history shows us, ‘configuration’ and ‘functionality’ are as close a relationship as they are an unpredictable identity.
Álvaro Siza usually says that “Nature is Nature, architecture is geometry”.
As Umberto Eco tells us, “we are condemned to find forms that harmonize with Nature, completing it; and Nature always triumphs – but subjugated to our disturbances.”
This will (always) be the role of architecture.
As Herberto Helder once wrote, “space does not exist, it is a metaphor for time”.
This is (exactly) how this house is, just (old) stone – just crafted by time.
“Excavated” between the rocky cliffs, a fraction of life becomes perennial – (in)finitely petrified.
Designed by João Cepeda Architect
Constantly striving for the essence.
Prone to eschew fashion or trends of any kind or "ism".
Does not acknowledge problems or questions of 'form' – only of construction.
Does not contemplate 'form' as a goal or cause 'per se' – only as the result of an informed intricate process (not as the motive, only as a consequence).
Dismisses, thus, 'form' as an objective by itself – or in other words, (mere) 'formalism'.
Focuses on restoring architectural practice to what it should (exclusively) belong to, and which (still) remains as its (sole) core support –
materiality and its pure construction design.
Considers these as grounding and embodying the discipline's (only) possible creative tools –
and ultimately, the architect's (specific) potential themes.
Ponders that architecture should just be itself – and not some (subliminal) 'symbol' aiming to metaphorically depict something else.
In a time that celebrates the frivolous and nonessential, and in which detail, refinement and (slow) absorption are (usually) neglected or half forgotten, he essays within a tradition of an architecture of 'resistance', one that speaks and communicates nothing more than its very own (silent) language.
Significance, conceptualization and value come afterwards – they lie in the eye of the beholder, and not of the former.
Believes that each project bears the imprint of its own circumstances.
Though seeking for the acuity of very precise answers to each specific problem, he strives for a particular 'constellation':
the ambiguity of an (anonymous) spatial 'composite conglomerate', that allows for (and specifically responds to) a certain use, but that can (occasionally or eventually) be freed from its purpose –
spaces in (constant) expectation, and not merely the (usual) principle of "form follows function".
Hence, each project synthesizes a unique and unrepeatable (poetic) endeavor.
Refers Japan as a defining experience in his life.
In Japan, he was guided through a line of local customs and traditions, and enlightened to their exquisite culture.
As such, he learned their evocative vision of the mundane, and the beauty of impermanence.
In short, to accept 'space' as one accepts 'time' –
with its share of (in)finiteness, transience, unpredictability, melancholy and ineffableness.
Ever since, he became interested in presence, and in reconciling built spaces with their sense of belonging, memory, harmony and grace –
like an endless 'elegy' to what is continuously both perennial and ephemeral.
Practices architecture as a secular discipline that, among and together with coordinating several areas of expertise, (still) possesses its own autonomy.
Although claiming that, every so often, it may reach a timeless artistic existence, he regards architecture as an “art” solely through its Greek ancient essence and meaning, the original root-word “techné” –
a specific way of knowledge or 'know-how', that operates with its own specific means (or a particular, intuitive but concrete sense of doing, which arises from both accumulated experience and sensibility – or in other words, from both practice and theory).
Hence, he interprets architecture as
an art of designing,
an art of building,
an art of inhabiting –
and, ultimately,
an art of living.