Houses for elderly people in Alcácer do Sal | Aires Mateus

Excerpt: ‘Houses for elderly people in Alcácer do Sal’ by Aires Mateus is an architectural project that features an expressive and clear design, with independent units aggregated into a unique form. The designed path, like a wall emerging organically from the terrain, defines and demarcates the open space while organizing the entire plot. The project aims to understand and interpret the balance between social and private aspects.

Project Description

[Text as submitted by architect] The project is based on an attentive reading of the life of a very specific kind of community, a sort of a micro-society with its own rules. It is a program, somewhere in between a hotel and a hospital, that seeks to comprehend and reinterpret the combination social/private, answering to the needs of a social life, and at the same time of solitude.

Independents united aggregate into a unique body, whose design is expressive and clear. The reduced mobility of those who will live in the building suggests that any displacement should be an emotive and variable experience.

The distance between the independent units is measured and drawn to turn the idea of path into life, and its time into form. The building, designed path, is a wall that naturally rises from the topography: it limits and defines the open space, organizing the entire plot.