fala atelier fronts ‘suspended house’ in porto with a vibrant asymmetry

fala atelier designs ‘suspended house’ as an ambiguous volume

In an artery connecting Porto’s city center to its suburbs, where individual houses are being demolished daily to leave place for bigger housing developments, fala atelier was tasked to conceive ‘Suspended House’ — a new private dwelling with a peculiar design and color composition.

‘The façades of the project stemmed from a rough conjugation of two different building types, sitting in a fragile ambiguity. Following the plans’ logic, a rational order is superimposed with a set of seemingly inordinate elements: row windows, erratic marble frontons, seemingly arbitrary drainpipes, and pink marble discs unbalancing the composition. The house is an exercise on uniqueness as much as it is an exercise on banality,’ writes the practice.

image © fala atelier

a flexible interior organized around a central column

The interior of ‘Suspended House’ by fala atelier (see more here) follows similar policies. An off-centered column functions as a hinge and divides each level into four equivalent quadrants. There are three levels, and the street access is on the middle one. Fixed or flexible programs uniformly occupy these quadrants, leaving residents free to determine their uses. ‘The house is a static frame for the changing dynamics of life. Its central column is a condensing, symbolical element, a substratum of these dynamics. Its shape is arbitrary and exuberant, providing distinct perspectives to each room. A collection of blue doors interconnect different rooms and adorn the column like superhero capes,‘ continues the project team.

The column levitates a few centimeters from the ground on the lower level, undivided and open to the garden. The floor under it is, therefore, easy to clean, and the fragility of the entire structure is revealed.

image © fala atelier