House in Leiria by ARX Portugal

Residents have to go careful on the roof terrace of this Portuguese house, where gaping chasms drop down to basement courtyards two floors below.

Designed by Lisbon studio ARX, the concrete house is situated outside the city of Leiria and comprises two floors, one of which is sunken into the ground.

Kitchens and utility rooms in this basement surround the two lower courtyards, while ground floor balconies and terraces overlook them from above.

A large open-plan living room is located on this ground floor, as are bedrooms that open out to a private L-shaped garden.

An external staircase leads up from one balcony to the roof, which offers a panoramic view of the city skyline beyond.

ARX also designed another house with courtyards cut out from the roof, which was popular on Dezeen back in July - see the story here and see more projects in Portugal here.

Photography is by Fernando Guerra.

Here are some more details about the project from ARX:

House in Leiria

The house is located in a "typical" peripheric urbanization of Pousos, a parish of the municipality of Leiria.

Situated east of the city and at high ground, it works as a sort of panoramic belvedere over Leiria.

So as to assure for more space and complete access to the faraway view, the owners also bought the three lots ahead, over the "cliff", that were later gathered in a single lot.

Although each lot allowed for the construction of a basement and two more storeys, usually compacted and isolated in the centre of the lot, this assemblage allowed the possibility of having a lower house, which "embraced" flatter portions, with garden space.

When we went to the place the first time, the streets surrounding the lot had already been made and, because of the earth displacement necessary for the street making, the land rose suddenly, starting from the sidewalk, like a suggestive construction of a topographic nature.

On the surroundings, all the neighbour houses were already built and "circled" the lot in an "L" shape.

The conception of the house emerges directly from the way we observed this reality.

Dealing with a single-family house of large dimensions for local standards, we chose to divide the construction volume in two parts.

Half of the construction is buried, like a negative of the land, and assumed as being a part of it.

Over that half-land, a second volume is placed, long and flattened, in apparent white concrete. In the inferior volume are located the technical areas, the less used areas or those of support.

In the upper volume the socials areas gather around a main courtyard, and the bedrooms around a private second one.