Restyling the Troviscal House. Renovating, reinforcing the original architecture but without taking away its coherence

Casa Troviscal, in Portugal, in the village of the same name with its still predominantly rural character, was not an architectural model of the most erudite, but it had character.
In a landscape of isolated, often single-story houses interspersed with agricultural fields, the building to be restored throws a new challenge to designers

For the M2 Senos Arquitecto firm in charge of the renovation, the building built probably between the 1940s and 1950s with a language of Brazilian references between the new neo-classical and the picturesque, stimulated by the wild garden and beautiful trees, brings the challenge of "identifying what matters." That is, to strengthen the architecture, without taking away its coherence, and to tame the garden, without taking away its spontaneity. Several smaller buildings had also been added to the main building, spread over the land, which served to support agricultural activities

The first decision was to isolate the main building and work from there with the understanding that it would be imperative to introduce new rooms. This extension, to which the pergola and garage are added, is a new volume that seeks communion with the main house not by assimilation but by continuity, through the interpretive mimicry of the architectural elements of Casa Troviscal identified as fundamental: the loggia and the hall with its octagonal window

The new volume leans against the main house and its form reflects the design of the room in the negative, symbolically constituting the "outer room" in continuity with the garden, but standing out from its surroundings.
All formal work is based on the form of the arch, declined in different geometries and on different planes

The architectural language of the house has been synthesized. The blue color, present in the different overlapping layers of plaster, overtly exuberant, has a twofold function: the coherence between the old and the new and the recovery of the eccentricity of Casa Troviscal in its relationship with the garden and its surroundings