Project: Oeiras House / Location: Oeiras, Portugal / Architect: OODA / Location: Lisbon, Porto and Tirana, Portugal / Landscape: p4 Engineering Tekk, A3R Lda / Photography: Fernando Guerra | fg+sg
Located in Oeiras, Portugal, OODA‘s Oeiras House emerges from the sloping hillside as though it were carved into the landscape. Working alongside landscape designers p4 Engineering Tekk and A3R Lda, OODA carefully integrated the home into the surrounding terrain. “Topography is the raw material of the idea,” the architects explain, describing a design where the landscape becomes an active part of the home’s experience.
The home unfolds as a U-shaped plan, “formed by three sides that are [embedded] in the terrain,” with one wing dedicated to the home’s social spaces and another housing the private functions. The central void feels as though the solid mass of the home has been carved away, creating a courtyard that draws nature into the heart of the home. Here, a white concrete patio “regulates, distributes and connects the different areas of the home” before extending toward a narrow linear pool that mirrors the home’s horizontal nature.
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“[These wings are joined] at the center by a volume that emphasizes transparency as the sliding glass dissolves the boundary between interior and exterior,” the architects explain, adding that “the horizontality of the [home’s design becomes] animated by different transparencies.”
The home’s material palette includes long runs of timber boards, paired with the darker wood framing the windows. This organizes the design as two distinct planes: a solid volume above and a plane below defined by sliding glass doors.
Large glass doors open up the center of the home from one side to the other and create the sense that the timber-clad mass above, weightlessly levitates above the wood floor. This continuous threshold between interior and exterior allows uninterrupted views through the home, transforming the surrounding landscape into an extension of the living space.
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The bathroom follows the same approach, wrapping the space in wood while introducing soft lighting, a circular mirror and a linear vanity that hovers above the floor. These raw materials soften the home’s minimalist aesthetic, while exposed timber beams and wood ceilings create an intimate atmosphere within the primary living spaces. In a narrow corridor anchored by a built-in bookcase in rich, deep-red tones, the wood-clad ceiling gives way to a white sloping ceiling that emphasizes the height of the space, allowing the corridor to feel bright and airy.
Minimalist architecture is often associated with clean lines, white surfaces and a restrained material palette that can sometimes feel austere or unapproachable, the firm says. The Oeiras House demonstrates how minimalism can instead feel intimate and inviting by championing wood in varying tones and textures. Together, these elements embody OODA’s approach of balancing the artificial and the natural. As OODA describes it, the design strategy “involves confronting and reconciling artificial and natural,” allowing architecture and landscape to exist as complementary forces rather than opposing ones.
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