A renovated home in Faro, Portugal, revels in randomness. Parts of walls seem to be peeled and cut off with no purpose or intention. Panels gesture at windows with no openings. Geometries range from rectilinearity to organic forms, seemingly developed through erosion over time. Far from the efficiency and rationality commonly found in planning residences, the home, dubbed “cut(outs) – ceiling, walls and pillar,” continues Portugal-based Corpo Atelier’s experiments with fragments, gestures, and reinterpretations.
From the outside, the home looks the same. Situated on a corner, its white blocky facade remains preserved and in line with the rest of the neighborhood. The only change—two new square windows that interrupt the cornice—hints at something irregular taking place inside.
Within, the firm arrives at an unconventional vision not through excessive or grandiose means but by restraint. Little is added to the space. Instead, Corpo Atelier sensitively subtracts to make what’s already there new again. Walls were removed. Pre-existing pieces were relocated. Surfaces were stripped to reveal the wood beneath white plaster. At times whole ceilings are revealed in wooden rafters. Other times, the fragments come in bits and pieces: in a column that runs white until it reaches the top, or across only half of a ceiling’s exposed beams.
Where there is a new introduction, it’s completely functionless. The firm added a pillar “for dramatic purposes only,” as it said. When it meets the ceiling, it serves only to highlight the interruption of wood cut-outs along the white space. The effect upends the expectations and logic of domestic spaces. Circulation eschews proscription for liminality.
Such experimentations are not uncommon for the 12-year-old firm. Founded by Filipe Paixão, it works across built projects, speculative proposals, and art. Working with structures within pre-existing structures, fragments, convexes and concaves, and stairs to nowhere, the studio continues to meditate on the possibilities and opportunities of reassembly.