Quinta de Bouçós Remodelling Portugal : Information

Remodelling of Quinta de Bouçós (chapel, manor-house and house with pool) Nuno Brandão Costa Location: Friestas, Valença do Minho, Portugal Photographs : Arménio Teixeira Descriptive Memory The place was always known and it became necessary to make things: The Chapel was (really) falling down. The manor-house was (badly) transformed and was also without building conditions. The farm’s land, except for the vineyard, was wild field. In a place that was always destined for holidays there were some elements missing: A swimming pool? Guestrooms? The chapel was drawn. During the land survey and during the cleaning of the stone, it was decided to leave everything and rebuild what had fallen down. Until reaching the actual level of the chapel’s threshold many things were found in the ruins. Everything that was necessary to stop us from inventing the original composition. In the soil was found the red color to make the mortar that would fill in the stone’s joints and would make the gravel for the pavements. The Cartesian certainties of the drawings were replaced by the uncertainties of the work itself. The dismounting of the stones, the holes in the façade, the cracks in the stones, the old stucco and other things that appeared and disappeared and that were not in the drawings. And they could not be. The work got hold of the plan with new stones pretending to be new, others changing place just to return to the original one, the frescos persisting forever in the stones, in other ords everything joined to consolidate the ruin. The confused and invisible levels returned to the threshold. The buried structure (concrete brackets) and the aerial one (metallic beams) will keep everything in place. The new light of the chapel comes from the floor’s gravel that remakes the altar. The manor-house had several plans, all of them filled with walls and staircases, very functional trying to resemble the 18th century. The 18th century look remained in the structure shown in stuccos in the noble floor and shown in stone in the cellar’s floor. Three bathrooms in the boundary of the habitable will make the house work. Another two rooms and a swimming pool was the modern proposal. The extension was unthinkable. In the west slope three concrete modulated bodies were dug – one is the swimming pool and the others are the bedrooms with skylights – the two are different in height, width and depth. A house. At the end, I would like to feel close to what the Architect Távora said in his descriptive memory of the house in Covilhã: ‘We met a long time ago However, now we know each other better and both of us are different’. Quinta de Bouçós Remodelling images / information from Nuno Brandão Costa Portuguese Houses Remodeling of Quinta de Bouçós - Building Information Friestas, Valença do Minho 1999-2007 Client: José Valentim Brandão Costa Architecture: Nuno Brandão Costa Collaboration: Joana Ribeiro, Ana Fortuna, André Eduardo Tavares Foundations and structures: José Lino, Eulália Soares (Newton) Installations and hydraulic equipments: José Rangel Electricity and security: Raul Serafim Barros, Alexandre Martins (GPIC) Gas, thermal, heating and ventilation: Raul Bessa (GET) Photography: Arménio Teixeira