Casa Costa Nova: A renovation that enhances local identity

Casa Costa Nova: A renovation that enhances the local identity it has been modified: 2024-05-03 di Benedetto Fiori

Architecture is often the synthesis between the designer's vision and the identity of the place. The Casa Costa Nova, designed by the architecture firm Espaço Objecto, Arquitetura & Design, Lda, perfectly embodies this concept.

Located in the heart of Costa Nova, this property attracted the attention of its owner for its architectural quality, thus determining the desire to proceed with the renovation works in order to adapt and expand it into a single-family home.

Although it is not a construction associated with the typical wooden “barns” of Costa Nova, the building integrates perfectly into the urban front of Avenida José Estevão, next to the estuary bank, thanks to its uniqueness. The design and chromatic effect of the tiles that cover its facade, as well as the wood carving work that outlines the highest point of the roof, constitute the decorative elements that stand out on the facade and which were preserved in the restoration works . The T4 single-family house typology implied an occupation along the plot, reconciling the existing building with an expansion area up to Avenida da Bela Vista, through circulation spaces and open spaces designed in the central area of the lot, such as the patio, the vertical garden, the swimming pool and the wall that delimits it to the south, which includes a ceramic panel with a great chromatic and plastic effect by the sculptor António Nobre.

Since this is a lot adjacent to two public roads and, given the layout of the two main bodies of the house, the pre-existing one and the new volume, it was necessary to introduce paths to relate them and bring them closer, since they are complementary from a functional point of view in the internal organization of spaces. This type of occupation is characteristic in this urban area of Costa Nova, where the internal filling of the lots takes place through small buildings used as an extension of the living spaces, often rented during the beach season.

From the new volume overlooking Av. da Bela Vista, it was decided to opt for a formal approach to the border of the building to the north, in terms of volumetry, in an allusion to the "barn" typology of Costa Nova as regards the image of the gable roof and the materialization of its facades, where wooden cladding was used.