RETIREMENT HOME

On the border between natural spaces and inhabited spaces, the retirement home overlooks the typical hills of the Leiria region, in Portugal.

Users of this place are looking for rest and calm but also want to avoid loneliness and isolation. To do this, we propose an architecture that reflects this ambivalence: calm and serenity in the center of the house and sharing and socialization around the house.

The square in continuity with the street invites walkers to discover the community garden by going down the large ramp which, at nightfall, transforms into an open-air cinema, when the climate permits. All these spaces encourage meetings and mixing between residents and passers-by. ​

Located on the square: the house, in the shape of an atrium, adapts perfectly to the local climate with its patio. Centrally located, the patio is a calm and cool space exclusively reserved for residents. The pool in the center of the patio offers an atmosphere conducive to rest. This basin also has a technical use: it collects the rainwater which flows from the roof in the form of an impluvium. Surplus water is collected in a tank to allow watering of the garden during dry periods.

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The building is divided into two parts: The first consists of a solid mineral stone base in continuity with the square and the access ramp to the garden. Semi-buried, it integrates into the topography to make the connection between the top of the land (the street) and the bottom of the land (the garden). The living spaces of the house are integrated into this base and are open to both the patio and the garden.

The second part brings together the care, administration and bedroom spaces. It is made of a wooden frame, like a fine skeleton, it ensures the flexibility and reversibility of the building. It considerably limits the volumes of cement used compared to traditional construction. This minimal framework is the support for the wooden floors but also for the facade modules.

An effective way of combating the heating of living spaces during heatwave periods consists of widely ventilating the spaces at night when the outside temperatures are milder, to store this relative freshness in the inert masses of the construction (in the walls in stones in particular) and to limit solar gain as much as possible during the day. We have designed a thick facade device to create shadows and limit the sun's rays on the glass surfaces.  This device in the form of a prefabricated facade module offers perfect implementation (because it is carried out in series and in the workshop) with factory quality control monitoring. It also considerably limits nuisance on the site and makes it possible to optimize construction times.   The use of local and sustainable materials is essential. The Leiria region is rich in natural building materials. Several limestone quarries are present in the south and numerous logging operations in the north offer construction timber.

The building is therefore intended to be rational in its construction methods and materials, but also sober and resilient. Essential virtues for sustainable architecture.

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