Casas do Lameiro

The proposal is based on a principle of critical continuity.

It reflects the Botto Machado family’s intention to convert the former garages, previously part of the estate’s water meadow, into two rural tourism units.

Pedro Botto Machado Falcão e Cunha (1922–1982), architect and urban planner, designed the structure through a spontaneous process, working without drawings or structural calculations and relying on intuition and sensitivity. Despite this informality, the garages follow a clear system of seven bays defined by stone pillars, creating a precise structural and spatial rhythm.

The 2017 wildfires caused a significant rupture, reducing the structure to its essential elements. The granite pillars and a horse chestnut tree remain, with the tree’s enduring presence now defining the site.

The proposal builds on these surviving elements, preserving and enhancing the structural and spatial matrix defined by the pillars, and extending toward the horse chestnut tree.
These two elements guide the project’s spatial organization, establishing proximity and framing, and defining interconnected interior and exterior spaces.

The pillars are reinforced with a wrapping intervention to enhance their capacity, supporting a timber structure that shapes both interior and exterior spaces.

The clarity of these structural solutions gives the building a distinct character, with materials used according to necessity and expressed through a simple, coherent architectural language.

The project establishes a strategy for re-inhabiting the water meadow through a rural tourism program integrated with broader agricultural use. It mediates the relationship between the new units, the main house, and the surrounding landscape, especially the Serra da Estrela.

At meadow level, a stone platform accommodates outdoor dining, a raised bathing tank, and a small sun deck. The water meadow remains mostly open for grazing and cultivation.

A clearing offers informal space, and a new orchard of native apple trees softens the site’s edge. The water meadow evolves as a productive landscape, with elderflower and elderberry grown for family and guests.

A pedestrian path follows the stream, connecting the main architectural and agricultural elements of the site.