RESIDENTIAL

Y HOUSE

Óbidos . 2003

Design year
2003
Construction year
2004 - 2005
Location
Arelho, Óbidos, Portugal
Team
Jorge Sousa Santos
Client
Telmo Faria
Awards
Bienal Ibero Americana 2008 | Prémio Jovem Autor | Obra Seleccionada; Prémios Revista Construir 2007 (melhor obra privada | nomeação); Finalist Building of the Year Archidaily 2010 | Categoria Casas

Gallery

About the project

House Y is structured around three functionally autonomous volumes. Their unity is constructed through an interstitial space that organises circulation and concentrates domestic experience: the living room.

This space activates the landscape through movement. The view is neither fixed nor privileged; it unfolds sequentially. The landscape appears alternately as a frontal panorama or as a tangential image, shaped by everyday paths through the house.

These paths develop along two main axes — south –north, associated with private areas, and east –west, associated with everyday support spaces. At their intersection, the living room operates as a point of visual convergence, establishing a direct relationship with the library at the western edge of the building.

The project frames the house as a system of relationships between space, movement and image, in which the landscape shifts from background to an active component of daily use.