Fala Atelier architecture studio has completed a project of five houses with a concept that tries to unify them through the façade and the interior. This building is located in the town of Marco de Canaveses, located in the Porto district in the north of Portugal.

Cohesion between the façade, the dwellings and the structure of the building is composed like a game through its openings to the outside, such as the balconies, and the different rhythms and internal dimensions that alternate the shape of the walls. This "game" gives the project its name "Houses of cards".

Fala Atelier tries to convert the five houses into one, rejecting the fragmentation that prevails on the part of the environment. Building is divided into two stories high, being the maximum buildable volume. The tension between the collective and the private is unified through the general aesthetic proposed for the entire home.

Ground floor contains the living rooms, which extend to the street entrances and at the rear to the gardens. In habitable areas, transversal walls are freer, more generous and unitary. First floor has the bedrooms arranged in a simple way, with circulation spaces and bathrooms.


Houses of cards by Fala Atelier. Photograph by Francisco Ascensão.


Houses of cards by Fala Atelier. Photograph by Francisco Ascensão.

Description of project by Fala Atelier

The maximum buildable volume was found to be a distorted box, two-storeys high. Refusing the fragmentation prevalent in the surroundings, the five houses pretend to be one. An object in tension between the collective and the private – a plural wedding cake.

Its cohesion lies in a façade that wraps playfully around the four sides, roughly structured in vertical bands: openings (porte-fenêtres and balconies) alternate with walls (complete with triangular crowns and marble belly buttons). The clashing rhythms and exceptions give the internal dissensions away.

The ground floor is floating, hovering above a miniskirt of garage doors. It contains transversal living rooms, spanning between the bridge entrances on the street side, and the gardens in the back. The living spaces sway between free transversal walls, generous and unitarian. The private level is organised like the section of a fruit. A layer of simply ordered bedrooms conceals a core of frivolous bathrooms and circulation spaces. In each house, a lone column, seemingly arbitrary, pins the two floors together, and dialogues with a roof opening providing daylight to the core. So despite their transversal configuration, the houses have pseudo-centers – a few vertical things, in unstable positions.

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Architects
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Project team
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Filipe Magalhães, Ana Luisa Soares, Ahmed Belkhodja, Lera Samovich, Ana Lima, Joana Sendas, Paulo Sousa.
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Area
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820 m².
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Dates
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2018-2021.
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Location
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Marco de canaveses, Porto. Portugal.
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Photography
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Fala Atelier is a naïve architecture practice based in Porto, led by Filipe Magalhães, Ana Luisa Soares and Ahmed Belkhodja. Established in 2013, the atelier works with methodic optimism on a wide range of projects, from territories to birdhouses.

Filipe Magalhães (Porto, 1987) graduated in architecture at faculdade de arquitectura do Porto and Fakulteta za Arhitekturo in Ljubljana; wrote the thesis ‘between the abstract and the figurative’. Worked with Harry Gugger in Basel and Aanaa in Tokyo. Visiting professor at Bratislava’s faculty of architecture.

Ana Luisa Soares (Porto, 1988) graduated in architecture at faculdade de arquitectura do Porto and Tokyo university; wrote the thesis ‘The matter of ideas’. Worked with Harry Gugger in Basel and Toyo Ito in Tokyo. Visiting professor at Bratislava’s faculty of architecture.

Ahmed Belkhodja (Lausanne, 1990) graduated in architecture at ETH Zurich after having also studied in Lausanne, Gothenburg and Singapore; worked with Harry Gugger in Basel, Obra architects in New York, and Atelier Bow-wow in Tokyo.
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Published on: March 28, 2023
Cite: "Five houses with the same center. Houses of cards by Fala Atelier" METALOCUS. Accessed
<https://www.metalocus.es/en/news/five-houses-same-center-houses-cards-fala-atelier> ISSN 1139-6415
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