Extraordinary house for elderly people by Aires Mateus Arquitectos

Dec 30

Design, Extreme Architecture, Photos Add comments

This images present a nursing home in Alcácer do Sal, Portugal, by Portuguese studio Aires Mateus Arquitectos. The façade is reminiscent of a checkerboard, with its white surface punctured at intervals by recesses to shade its glazing. The long building meanders over the site, rising and falling with the topography of the landscape. A surrounding landscaped garden reaches up to the roof of at some parts, giving access to the top of the building.

Here’s some information from the architects:

ALCÁCER DO SAL FORM

The project is based on a attentive reading of the life of a very specific kind of community, a sort of a micro-society with its own rules.

It is a program, somewhere in between a hotel and a hospital, that seeks to comprehend and reinterpret the combination social/private, answering to the needs of a social life, and at the same time of solitude.

Independents unities aggregate into a unique body, whose design is expressive and clear.

The reduct mobility of those who will live in the building suggests that any displacement should be an emotive and variable experience.

The distance between the independent units is measured and drawn to turn the idea of path into life, and its time into form.
The building, designed path, is a wall that naturally rises from the topography: it limits and defines the open space, organizing the entire plot.