Excerpt: G – 5 Houses by SUMMARY is based on total prefabrication in reinforced concrete, using modular panels for façades, roofs, and interior partitions. The design highlights a free span and a modular rhythm, contrasting the grey concrete base with green pigmented boxes above, whose irregular arrangement reinforces the building’s expressive image and relates to terraces, cross ventilation, and east–west orientation.
Project Description
[Text as submitted by architect] The project is based on total prefabrication in reinforced concrete. Modular panels make up all the building elements: façades, roofs and interior partitions. The typification of elements made it possible to speed up and simplify the construction, while emphasising the building’s image.
In overall terms, the project houses five dwellings – three with two floors, two with a single floor. On the ground floor, the dwellings have a rectangular and regular plan, each with two free fronts. On the upper floor there are three separate parallelepiped boxes, irregularly arranged on the large roof slab of the lower floor. The free space between them is occupied by terraces, accessible by a single flight of stairs from the rear of the building, facing east towards the Serra da Freita.
The prefabricated wall panels form a free span of 6.30 metres between them, constituting vertical load-bearing elements on which pre-slab pieces rest, composing the ground floor roof. This slab acts as a cutting element in the building’s image: below it, all the modules are made of grey concrete; above it, the concrete is pigmented green, visually separating the three boxes from the base of the building where they rest.
Each house has an individualised entrance from the street, which connects to a covered outdoor space, where the door that gives access to the common areas of each house is located. Access is as direct as possible – you enter the house from the living room, from where the rest of the rooms and accesses are distributed, dispensing with atriums and minimising circulation areas.
Interior compartmentalisation is defined by prefabricated panels that act both as bracing and reinforcement of the structure, avoiding the use of additional masonry. For this reason, concrete is also the most common element inside the building. However, due to the specific nature of the moulds used to produce these pieces, each one has two different faces – one smooth and one rough. The project was developed with this in mind, endeavouring to take advantage of the smooth faces whenever possible and concealing the rough faces on surfaces hidden by kitchen equipment, cupboards or ceramic tiles in the sanitary facilities.
Both the ground floor and the upper floor face east and west, favouring natural cross ventilation and good sun exposure, which eliminates the need for any air conditioning or mechanical ventilation system.
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