A ruined house in the heart of Braga, in Portugal, and a sensible intervention. A long site that runs across the block and connects the main street to a lower elevation. A main facade to preserve and a new volume resulting in a new house and its courtyard, interdependent, because to the urban house is allowed its “natural” space. The house results from this relationship, from this possibility of controlling its “own world”, its views and the outer space, without the constraint of the direct relationship with the pubic space, in the hustle and bustle of urbanity.

If on one side the facade assumes the continuity of the street and its bourgeois character, on the other side the courtyard's retreat above the garage is a void on the block, “dug” through gables. The possibility of nonexistence, the blind walls between a growing vegetation in the absence and the shelter of housing that breaks through these walls and reveals the dimension of interior use.

The house was designed taking into account the family dynamics of customers and the bond that binds them to their children. The full use of the house is periodic, at meeting times, holidays and parties. In everyday life is a home for a couple of habits and consolidated routines, which simultaneously require approach space as well as individual space and whose needs are equivalent to half-house use. The project reflects this reality in its organization and architectural expression. The third floor, intended for children or guests, completely terminates its relationship of use with the other facilities of the house. The exterior also reveals this formal valorization of the house only for the couple: from the blind façade opens the ground floor room and the balcony of the parents suite on the first floor, purposely hiding the remaining windows of the children's and guests' bedrooms.