Visioarq designs dreamy seaside escape, QL House
/A play on proportions, QL House by Portugal-based Visioarq Architects sits on a sprawling plot of land in Algarve, the Southern coast of Portugal. The blocky concrete and steel façade gives way to epic views of golf greens, seaside inlets, and the deep blue Atlantic. Rising from the residential neighborhood, the crisp white two-story house dominates the landscape, it’s sharp angles punctuating sweeping gardens, an immaculate terrace, breezy pergola, and serene L-shaped lap pool.
“The QL House project was an exercise in balancing spaces and landscape integration,” Visioarq Architecture shares. “The articulation of two overlapping and perpendicular spaces generated not only a particular spacial dynamic, but also different visual relations between full and empty, light and dark - caused by the dynamic of shadows - between private areas, semi-private areas and the view of the surrounding landscape.”
Shot by famed photographer Fernando Guerra, the space offers a calm, coastal sanctuary. A continuous stairway along the indoor garden encourages circulation, illuminating the indoor spaces of the home that encompass a bright sun room, spacious living and dining rooms, a kitchen, four bedrooms, office, and playroom. Natural lighting abounds as indoor and outdoor spaces are masterfully merged with gargantuan two-story windows, numerous sliding doors, and abundant floor-to-ceiling glass.
Most noteworthy, perhaps, is the second-floor bedroom that extends in both directions beyond the bounds of the ground floor, jutting out in a juxtaposition of spacial proportions, creating an optical illusion that’s seemingly levitating. QL House’s hovering second story is appointed with motorized metallic shutters, equipped for filtering light and heat in Portugal’s intensely hot climate. A design dynamo in dimensions, the residence’s concrete, cork, aluminum, marble, and plaster combine in a sweet symphony of materials.
Photography courtesy of: Fernando Guerra
