A house turned away from the street

The project

A new house with a pool in Cascais, laid out around a covered room between garden and terrace. A preliminary planning application, not yet licensed.

What we were responsible for

A new house on a walled plot, laid out so that the pool is the first thing the house looks at and the street is the last. Two rendered volumes hold the plan apart: one closed and long, carrying the private rooms behind a timber-slatted upper storey; one open, a deep covered room between garden and terrace that is neither inside nor out. Between them a lawn court with mature trees kept where they stood. The kitchen is a single stone island in a room that also holds the wine store, because in a house of this size the kitchen is where people end up. Architecture and engineering under one design contract.

Who built it

WALLNUT was responsible for the design. No construction contract has been awarded — and the work can go to site with us, under a single contract.

What this does not include

The client is not named and neither is the street. This is a preliminary planning application, submitted to the council in November 2024 and still awaiting its certificate: nothing is licensed, nothing is built, and the design may yet change in response to the council. The images are renders. Furniture, art and planting are indicative of the design intent, not a specification.

Verified facts

Volumes
2 one closed, one open
The pool sits
1 lap length along the lawn, in front of the living room
Mature trees kept where they stood
— all of them: the court was drawn around them
The plot
1 407,24 m², rectangular and flat
Sides of the plot still unbuilt
3 east, west and north — the house is drawn for neighbours who do not exist yet
Setbacks the local plan requires
3 / 6 m to the sides and front, m to the rear
Submitted to the council
2024-11 preliminary application, certificate still awaited

Images

The house from the garden end: a long lap pool on cut lawn leading to a white rendered volume with a full-height glazed living room, loungers along the far edge and mature trees framing both sides. — The pool is the length of the lawn, and the living room is at the end of it.

A deep covered room open on two sides: low seating around a stone fire table on a timber deck, full-height curtains drawn back, a dining table beyond and trees standing at the open edge. — Neither inside nor out. It is the room the house is organised around.

A planted court between two volumes, mature trees rising through it, a deep concrete lintel overhead and lawn running up to the walls on both sides. — The trees were there. The court was drawn around them.

The closed volume seen from the back garden: a rendered wall with one wide horizontal window showing a sitting room inside, timber slats above, and dense planting along the base. — One window on this side, and it is the width of the room.

The kitchen: a single pale stone island with six stools and an integrated hob, a linear pendant the length of it, a lit wine store to the left and a window over the sink onto planting. — One island, six stools, and the wine store in the same room.

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