Chapters of Black Book

Black Book Travels: Melides, Setubal, Portugal

Mar 23, 2023

Black Book Travels: Melides, Setubal, Portugal

If you’re tuned to the quietness that the stillness of nature inspires, you can start to notice the small things that make up the pervading spirit of a place and bring your senses to life. The little things that give a place meaning, that, when you’re back home, reawaken memories. Amidst the day’s dance of light and shade, you can sense the ever-changing landscape, the feeling of calmness that expands from the mountainous interior until it reaches the roar of the sparkling Atlantic, you can inhale the tonifying fresh sea air and the scent of the breeze as it merges with pines, flowers, and salty sea, you can feel the scorching heat of warmer days softened by the cool mountain breeze that’s soothing to the skin, and you can listen to the sweet melody of the crunching branches, croaking toads and crackling fireplaces. But above all, you can appreciate the myriad of ways that nature can become as much a part of our architecture, as we become an integrated part of nature. How we juxtapose yet simultaneously blend, how human-made construction can rise like sculptures but still be sympathetic to the expanse of land that they frame, exterior spilling over into interior, merging seamlessly to offer a serene place disconnect.

That’s exactly the beauty of @Pa.te.os, a halfway point between the Alentejo coast and the mountains, between nature and architecture, between absolute silence and sound, between light and dark. A set of concrete structures emerging as four houses that frame the sweeping vistas of the vast ocean and the far-reaching Serra de Grândola’s oak grove. Being inside, being outside, boundary between the two is blurred - colossal window-walls are not a barrier, but merely a continuation, a game of mirrors, a mirage. With the flick of a button, they slide back into the concrete, and the space is at once, one again; the sounds, smells and sights outside welcomed in. An intimate escape to connect with nature and experience a complete distortion of time. Simply allow the changing light to tell you.

Pa.te.os is the perfect place to capture lasting memories, to let your senses be enraptured and to experience the beauty of patio living; as much outside as in.

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