We are a small company that builds slowly in one part of one country, and we intend to stay that way.
Architect · Porto 1978
Trained at the FAUP under Souto de Moura’s assistants, ten years at Aires Mateus, and then a decision in 2014 that she would rather choose the land than be handed it. She draws the site plans herself, still on tracing paper first, and has never signed off a house she has not slept in.
Development · Lisbon 1974
Fifteen years in project finance, four of them spent watching money ruin good buildings. He does the land, the licences and the arguments with the câmara, and he is the reason Casa das Dunas took four years to permit and none to sell.
We walk a site at five in the afternoon in February and again in August before we make an offer. Two of the last nine we walked away from: one because the dune was moving, one because the neighbour’s pines were coming down.
Survey, contours, trees, water, wind. The plan is drawn on top of what is there, and the houses go where the land already had room for them. Thirty-eight per cent of every site stays as we found it, and that is written into the deeds.
Each development has one section — a wall, a deep roof, a terrace — and every house on the site is a variation of it. It is why a development of fourteen houses reads as one place rather than fourteen opinions.
Limestone, reed, pine, brass. Bought in one order for a whole site, from four suppliers we have used since 2016, three of them within ninety kilometres. Nothing is painted. Nothing is lacquered. Everything is allowed to go the colour the salt makes it.
The planting goes in the first winter, two years before the first roof. By the time the last plot sells, the pines are above the ridge line and the houses have started to disappear, which was the point.
Two rooms on Rua do Alecrim, one site under option at Carvalhal.
Six houses, our first. Sold before the roofs went on; all six still owned by the first buyers.
Nine hectares of failed eucalyptus bought at auction. The eucalyptus comes out that winter.
2.1 ha of umbrella pine planted at Casa das Dunas, three years before the first foundation.
Casa das Dunas consented after four years. Sado estate acquired in the same month.
First six houses at Comporta out of the ground. Melides put under option.
Comporta completing, Sado phase one on site, Melides with the câmara until November.
Casa das Dunas and Herdade do Sado. Rita Bastos, Nuno Mateus.
Praia Norte, and the interiors of the Sado clubhouse.
Every planting plan since 2016, and the dune management agreements.
Flood studies, foundations on sand, and the post frames at Melides.
Four thousand two hundred umbrella pines, at four metres apart, in the winter before we had permission to build anything. They are seven metres now. In 2036 they will be twelve, which is two metres higher than the tallest ridge on the site, and the houses will be gone from the beach view entirely.
Campo Aberto Paisagismo · planting plan VDR-CDD-LP-004