Casa da Volta
Alentejo, Portugal // 2022
A slice of rural heaven where the character of the Alentejo is embodied with a new vision. Just a 1.5-hour drive from Lisbon, 30 mins from the Atlantic beaches of Portugal’s Alentejo and the cool coastline of Comporta is a landscape filled with heavy cork trees, caramel cows and a slower pace of life at Casa da Volta.
Casa da Volta is an architectural take on rural living designed in collaboration with the well renowned, Lisbon based practice, Promotório Architects and the newly established, Silva Cravo Architects. Together they have woven modern minimalism and a distinct, contemporary feel with nostalgic timelessness.
The interiors at Casa da Volta have been designed to blend with the nuances of the Alentejo’s idyllic landscape and to pay homage to the culture that envelopes both the house and the unique heritage of it’s owners. Offering its inhabitants a scope of cultures and experiences that encourage a slower, more connected way of life, the house leaves aside the marks of time and connects us with the past in a peaceful environment.
In the old days these ceramic pots were used by the local field workers to cook their lunch. They would boil vegetables, a piece of meat and whatever nature would provide. A fire on the ground would be lite and all the pots around it. The advent of slow-cooking and a break from the hard field work.
Casa da Volta’s typology of a fortified farm is the dominant form of occupation across the Maghreb and the Mediterranean, from Roman antiquity and Arab settlements, to Fernand Pouillon’s and Le Corbusier’s excursus in Argel.
Casa da Volta echoes the tradition of the Portuguese alcáçova, —or qasbah, following its Arab etymology—, which functioned as a defensive citadel, or compound, with its constructions built within and protected by a high-walled perimeter.
Settled in the depths of an abundant triangle, Casa da Volta sits at the intersection between the sleepy village of Grandola, the hum of nearby Comporta, and Melides, a rural place where a community of creatives, have quietly settled into an alternative groove behind the dunes of the coast, amongst the undulating rhythm of cork forests and traditional Portuguese villages.
Photography: Maximilian Pohler
Client: Casa da Volta
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