In Lourinhã, on the Portuguese coast, Extrastudio designed a house that combines formal radicalism and landscape humility, in close dialogue with the topography and the light.
It's a story of chance that became an architectural manifesto. Travelers discovered a steep piece of land, a narrow strip overlooking the Atlantic, and decided to build a holiday home there. Lourinhã, a modest, agricultural region famous for its orchards and its proximity to the legendary beaches of Ericeira and Peniche, provided the setting. Extrastudio designed Casa Plaj, a dwelling that embraces an almost archaic simplicity while employing highly subtle spatial arrangements.
The founding principle is a gesture of lightness: four load-bearing walls support a cruciform platform, upon which the main volume rests, as if suspended above the landscape. The house touches the ground in only one place, where one enters, and opens elsewhere into floating terraces. Each bedroom, each room thus finds its extension towards the landscape, transforming the interior into an airy refuge.
The layout is intentionally compact (120 square meters), yet paradoxically, it evokes a sense of spaciousness. The living room, open to three directions, rises beneath a large skylight, while artfully placed oculi distribute light even to the most secluded corners. These openings follow the strict geometry of the structure and, at the solstices, cast beams of light across the space like a sundial.
The home experience is characterized by informality and permeability: taking a bath in the bathroom can become an open-air experience, the windows disappearing entirely into the thickness of the walls. The constant dialogue between architects, clients, and craftsmen allowed for the unexpected: gray plaster walls left raw, niches and portholes added on-site, a steel door replaced by incandescent red glass, and marbles and travertines chosen for their resonance with the interior tones. The project was enriched by this construction time, the ingenuity of the workers, and fortunate accidents.
Outside, there's nothing ostentatious: a long, narrow pool nestles among the wild pines, and a row of fruit trees reinforces the agricultural character of the slope. The landscape remains sovereign, barely tamed. Casa Plaj doesn't seek to dominate, but to coexist with it, suspended between the sea and the valley, in an extended temporality where light, wind, and the seasons are the true architects.
