Raulino Silva Keeps an Old Granite Wall and Builds a Family House and Rental Flats Behind It in Vila do Conde

On a corner plot in the historic centre of Vila do Conde, in northern Portugal, Raulino Silva Arquitecto was asked to fit two programs onto one site. The first was a single-family house. The second was a small rental building with two apartments above a ground-floor shop. The site previously held a one-storey building, and its old granite façade on Comendador António Fernandes da Costa Street still stands. The architect split the brief into two buildings. The house sits on the footprint of the old structure, and the collective block faces the busier Conde D. Mendo Street.

Plenty of Portuguese projects keep a historic wall and put a white volume behind it, so that move alone is not the story. What interests us is how carefully Raulino Silva measures each step back. The house's upper floor retreats from the street so it does not crowd the façade opposite. That setback also keeps the roof of the Capela dos Passos visible from the street. The old wall keeps its original height and profile. On the other street, the collective building takes on the scale of its multi-storey neighbours. The result reads as two buildings, each matched to its own street, that share one garden.

A Granite Base, Kept at Its Original Height

The rubble granite wall does most of the work at street level. It forms the main façade of the house, and it carries on around the inner patio and the corner with the Alminhas de São José, a small wayside shrine. Above and behind it, the new construction is smooth white render with black-framed glazing and railings. You never mistake old for new, and neither one dominates the other.

The rounded drum at the corner is the most legible gesture in the composition. It turns the white mass around the bend without a hard edge, which softens the meeting of the two streets. Next to the carved coat of arms and iron balconies of the older neighbour, the white volume stays plain and does not compete for attention. That restraint is the right call in a historic centre where the surrounding context is already busy.

Cantilevers Over an Open Ground

Behind the wall, the white volumes are cantilevered, with projecting boxes over an open carport and over the planting. The ground plane stays porous, so the car, the cobbles and the lemon tree occupy the same shaded space under the building. In the southern sun, the overhangs cast hard shadows that give the flat render surfaces depth over the course of the day.

The staggered boxes on the side elevation also do a quieter job. The project describes suspended patios on the side and rear façades that bring daylight into the apartments' service spaces. The same patios screen the house's garden from view. Light and privacy come from one element, which is a sensible use of a tight urban plot.

The Garden as the Private Core

The interior garden, with its long narrow pool and a small secondary building, is where the house opens up. Its rear elevation is almost entirely glazed at ground level, so the living spaces run straight out onto the lawn. Facing the street, the same house is closed and stony. Facing the garden, it is open and transparent. The house works by keeping those two faces completely different.

The apartments get their own outlook. Each has a large balcony facing the city, with a view toward the Igreja Santa Clara, and the old aqueduct appears in the distance over the stone walls and parked cars. Tenants look out over the town, while the owners look inward to the garden. Splitting the views this way keeps both groups from overlooking each other.

Interiors in Oak and Daylight

The interiors are calm and use few materials: oak floors, white walls and black-framed sliding glass. Inside, the granite wall becomes the backdrop to the dining table, seen through the glass. The furnishings are domestic and warm and keep the white shell from feeling clinical, but the architecture is clearly the plane of glass meeting the stone and the lawn.

The bedrooms open onto balconies above the garden. Floor-to-ceiling glazing, softened by sheer curtains, frames the neighbouring red tile roofs. These are generous apartments and rooms by the standard of a dense historic core, and the generosity comes mainly from controlled views rather than floor area.

Circulation as an Acoustic Buffer

The smartest planning decision in the house is easy to miss. Its circulation runs along the street side, so corridors and stairs sit between the rooms and the traffic. This buffer absorbs street noise and leaves the bedrooms and living spaces facing the quiet garden.

Because the corridors face the street, they also hold the house's views back to the town. A tall window looks across a gravel court to an ornate stone façade, and a glass corner frames the granite wall and stone steps. As a result, the circulation spaces are pleasant to walk through rather than left over. In a narrow plan, that is a good return on the space spent on corridors.

Working It Out in Card

The white card models make the strategy clear. An L-shaped arrangement wraps a central courtyard. A long, low two-storey bar sits along one street, and a taller block holds the corner. Seen from above, the scheme is mostly a question of where the courtyard goes and how much mass each street can take.

The street-side model shows the long bar punctured by small openings, in contrast to the open garden side. Testing that difference in card, before committing to detailing, explains why the finished building holds together so well.

Plans and Drawings

The plans show how the program is divided. On the ground floor, the living spaces, garage and shop are arranged around the planted courtyard and pool. The first floor places a row of bedrooms in the long wing and the apartments in the corner block. The second floor completes the corner block, while a flat roof with three skylights covers the house. The sections and elevations show the stepped profile against the long stone wall, and the exploded axonometric separates the roofs and upper floors from the ground-level courtyard.

Why This Project Matters

Historic town centres in Portugal need exactly this kind of building: small-scale, mixed in use, partly rental and respectful of what is already there. Raulino Silva shows that one plot can hold a family home, two rental flats and a shop without the result feeling crammed. The project also does not simply mimic its neighbours. Each part responds to its own street. The quiet street gets the old wall and a setback. The busy street gets height and a shop on the ground floor.

The broader lesson is that context is something you measure rather than imitate. The setbacks keep the chapel roof in view. The circulation acts as a sound barrier. The suspended patios bring in light and protect privacy at the same time. None of these moves is dramatic on its own. Together, they make a modern addition that strengthens the street rather than taking from it, and that is worth studying for anyone building in an old town.

Collective Housing in Vila do Conde by Raulino Silva Arquitecto. Location: Vila do Conde, Portugal. Area: approximately 1,024 to 1,039 m² (sources differ). Year: 2024. Photography: Héctor Santos-Díez.

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