cascais | portugal
Guia Residence
From an approved project
to a home built around how its owners actually live
From an approved project to a home built around how its owners actually live
This plot in Cascais came, as many premium plots do, with an approved project already attached - a common feature on the market, meant to prove the site works and to cut months off a buyer's timeline.

It's a useful sales tool. It is not, however, a promise that the house on paper is the house a family should actually live in.

Our clients bought the plot for its location, not for the house that came with it. Once they engaged with us, the brief was clear: keep the approved footprint and the buildable envelope - protecting the permit already in hand - and redesign almost everything within it.
Three Requirements, Non-Negotiable
  • Ceiling height, pushed to the regulatory maximum.
    Every room in the house reaches as high as the local height limits allow - a constraint the clients treated as a floor, not a ceiling.
  • A house that reads larger than its footprint.
    At 450 m², the plan itself is modest.
    Pergolas and cantilevers were used to draw strong horizontal lines against the building's vertical mass, opening the house up visually while keeping it private from the street and from close neighbours on a tight plot.
  • Two atmospheres, one house.
    Facing the street: a restrained, almost maritime tone in keeping with Cascais - gulls audible, the Atlantic close enough to sense.
    Facing inward, toward the garden and pool: a lush, tropical calm the clients described simply as "Bali."
    Landscaping carried much of that shift, working hard on a small plot boxed in by neighbours.
The Pool Nobody Asked For


It wasn't part of the original brief, yet the pool became the project's visual anchor.

Raised above ground level rather than sunk into it - deliberately not "a tank in the ground" - it meets a glass corner with no visible fixings, so from any lounging area it reads as a suspended block of turquoise water.

At night, with the pool lighting, a fountain, and a glass overflow edge, the effect only sharpens.
  • Hi Joel,
    We are good, looking forward to go back to Portugal.

    We love your design.
    Fingers crossed that we are able to have 3,5 m tall windows on the first floor - that would be a wow factor when you walk in.

    Again, H. and I thank you for your amazing work and fast response.
    V. D.
    (LATVIA)


  • Joel,
    I would like to say again that I love the details and the virtual tour.

    Amazing job!
    It goes beyond my expectation.


    H.D.
    (SWITZERLAND)
Photo credits: Alexander Bogorodskiy