Arrábida: 66 m² proposed, 250 m² plan limit

The project

A prior information request for the alteration of existing buildings inside a natural park: structures removed following a conservation ruling, six outbuildings kept, and the main house turned into a studio of 65,86 m² where the plan allows 250. Everything published here comes from the file submitted to the council.

What we were responsible for

Inside a natural park, the question is never what you would like to build. It is what the plan already allows, and whether what stands there is legal. Here the answer to the second half was partly no, and a conservation ruling on an earlier application had said so. The proposal begins by removing what that ruling covers. Everything else works inside the footprint of the buildings that are legal — six single-storey outbuildings kept almost as they are, one of them set partly into the slope so the ground does the work of lowering it, and the main house turned into a single-storey studio dwelling of double height. The numbers are the argument, and they are the ones in the submission: 65,86 m² of dwelling where the sectoral plan allows up to 250, and 6,48 m of building height against a ceiling of 6,5. The pool that comes down is replaced by an irrigation tank that doubles as the water reserve for firefighting, which is what the plan requires of a house in this position. Yellow and pink render becomes white; asphalt shingles with dormers become a clean two-pitch roof in white ceramic tile; the upper part of the façade is screened by vertical timber slats that break the reflection and the outline against the park.

Who built it

WALLNUT was responsible for the design. No construction contract has been awarded — and the work can go to site with us, under a single contract.

What this does not include

This is a prior information request: nothing is licensed and nothing is built. Four images: one photograph of the buildings as they stand and three renders of the proposal, all four taken from the file submitted to the council. The drawings that went with them — sections, axonometrics and the location and siting plans — are instruction pieces for the process, and the last two would place the property, so none of them is published here.

Verified facts

Dwelling floor area proposed
65,86 m², where the sectoral plan allows up to 250
Height of the building
6,48 m, against a ceiling of 6,5
Site area
6 318 m²
Sealed surface of the plot
5,1 % of the site area
Structures the proposal removes
3 following a conservation ruling
Outbuildings kept
6 single-storey, almost unaltered

Images

A render of the proposal: a long row of low white buildings with white tiled roofs on the left, and on the right a taller volume clad in close-set vertical timber slats, on dry grass under a blue sky. — The same courtyard proposed. White render replaces yellow and pink, and the timber screen over the upper part of the façade is there to break the outline against the park rather than to be seen.

A render of the studio interior: a single tall room with a bed, a sliding glazed wall onto a courtyard, an olive tree in a pot, and high windows filtered by vertical timber slats. — A single room, of double height. This is the whole of the dwelling: kitchen, bed, bathroom and storage in 65,86 m².

An aerial render of the proposal in its setting: the row of white buildings and the timber-clad volume around a gravel courtyard, with cork oaks and open scrub beyond. — From the air, the two things the council checks: the footprint does not grow, and the setting is the park. Sealed surface is five per cent of the plot.

A courtyard between single-storey buildings rendered in pale yellow with red-painted bases, an overgrown lawn and a cobbled path, and a taller house with a tiled roof at the far end. — The buildings as they stand. The whole planning case is the mitigation of visual impact in a protected landscape, and mitigation cannot be argued without showing what is being mitigated.

Other work

House in Melides
Private house
A stone manor, room by room
Rehabilitation of a stone manor
Oasis Aparthotel
Aparthotel and serviced apartments

Reading note

On this page, 1 photograph of the state before the works and 3 renders of the design. We do not publish the client, the street, the property or its land-registry description. No costs, prices or margins are published.

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