Raulino Silva Turns His Grandparents' 1936 House in Rural Vila do Conde into His Own Architecture Studio

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This article covers topics related to Landscape Design, Installations. In Bagunte, Portugal, a granite family house gains white marble-floored rooms and a walled gravel courtyard without pretending the new part is old.

In Bagunte, Portugal, a granite family house gains white marble-floored rooms and a walled gravel courtyard without pretending the new part is old.

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UNI Editorial published Blog under Landscape Design, Installations on Oct 11, 2026

Architects rarely get to renovate a building they grew up around, and even more rarely do they become their own client in it. Raulino Silva Arquitecto did both. The small house in Santagões, in the parish of Bagunte in rural Vila do Conde, was built in 1936 by the architect's grandparents. For roughly a decade his studio worked inside it while it stayed almost exactly as his grandmother had left it. The 2024 project enlarges and reorganises that house into a 163 m² office, with a new rear extension set onto rocky ground.

The interesting part is the restraint, not the sentiment. The brief the architect set himself was to keep everything that could be kept and to refuse any imitation of the old: no reconstructed rusticity and no "fake old things." What results is a clear two-voice building. Granite, timber and a wood-fired oven carry the 1936 house. White render, marble and large panes of glass carry 2024. The skill lies in how the two meet without either one apologising.

A Street Face That Barely Changes

Street facade of a white house with red tile roof, set between a stone-framed entrance and a weathered green neighbor

Street view of the white house with terracotta roof between weathered stone and green-painted neighbours, under a clear blue sky

Interior with a polished concrete floor and a large opening with folding white panels, looking out to a road and a low wall

Street facade with two framed windows, white garage panel door and a stone wall with open pedestrian door in midday sun

Street facade at dusk with the garage door slid open and warm light inside the upper windows and stone-framed entry

Street entrance in a rubble stone wall with a granite lintel and pivoting white door, opening to steps, under a blue sky

From the road, you would struggle to tell anything has happened. The white house with its terracotta roof still sits between a weathered stone neighbour and a green-painted one, as it presumably has for nearly ninety years. The street level now holds the garage and a new technical area. A white garage panel and a pair of framed windows are the only contemporary signals, and at dusk the sliding door opens to show a lit interior behind a very ordinary-looking front.

The pedestrian entry is the more telling detail. A pivoting white door is set into a rubble stone wall under a granite lintel, so the new element is held inside the old frame rather than replacing it. We think this is the right call for a rural street. The village keeps its continuity, and the change is reserved for the people who actually walk through the door.

The Courtyard Is the Real Plan

White box volumes with large glazed openings glowing at dusk behind a gnarled tree and gravel courtyard framed by stone walls

Gravel courtyard between two dry stone walls with a white pavilion seen through the branches of two trees under cloudy sky

Gravel courtyard with a round stone well and two slender trees in front of the glazed white volumes at dusk

White stucco box with a deep frame around a floor-to-ceiling glazed dining room, glowing at dusk beside a dry stone wall

Frontal view of the white volume with a large sliding glass pane reflecting a stone wall and trees, black chair inside

Framed view from a white interior through a floor-to-ceiling window onto a gravel courtyard, dry stone wall and oak tree under cloudy skies

Side view through a tall black-framed window toward a dry stone wall and lavender bushes on gravel, with clouds above

Corner view of two white rendered volumes with deep window reveals and a marble step, beside a tree trunk in daylight

Behind the house, the upper floor extends toward the back and opens level with the courtyard. Because the site is so rocky, the extension could only push out at this upper level, and the architect turned that limit into the organising idea of the whole project. The gravel courtyard sits between two dry stone walls, with a gnarled tree, two slender trees and a round stone well. The new white volumes face it through large glazed openings.

These are plain stucco boxes with deep frames around full-height glass. At dusk they glow like lanterns against the rubble walls. By day the glass reflects stone and branches back at you. From inside, the floor-to-ceiling panes frame the oak, the lavender and the dry stone wall as if they were the office's only artwork. A studio that spends its days on drawings gets a view that changes with weather and season instead.

Marble Thresholds Against Rough Granite

Corner of the white stucco volumes with recessed glazing and a marble sill, beside a stone wall under cloudy sky

White rendered volume with a recessed glazed opening, marble sill and two marble steps beside a rough stone wall on gravel

Deep square opening in white wall holding a black stool and floor lamp, with marble steps beside a rough stone wall

Pale marble strip steps rising to a tall white pivot door beside a rough stone retaining wall and gravel edge

Rough granite retaining wall above pale marble steps and a gravel bed, with soft daylight raking across the stone

The most carefully drawn moments happen where new surfaces touch old ground. Pale marble strip steps climb beside a rough granite retaining wall, and marble sills cap recessed openings in the white render. Nothing tries to blend in. The marble is smooth, thin and precise, while the stone beside it is lumpy, heavy and irregular, and each makes the other easier to read.

One deep square opening in the white wall holds a black stool and a floor lamp, almost a vitrine that faces the stone. It is a small gesture, but it shows the attitude of the project. The thickness of the new wall is treated as usable space, not just a reveal.

Keeping the Roof, Gaining the Height

Whitewashed brick wall under exposed roof timbers, with a disc pendant lamp and a slim white coat stand

Attic workspace with white exposed roof rafters, a long desk and two small windows looking onto trees and power lines

White built-in bookshelf beside a flush door and tall window, with sunlight falling across the oak floorboards

Wooden spindle-back chair in a lit whitewashed stone recess, seen past a white bookshelf holding green and grey spines

Inside the old house, the most consequential decision was to keep the original wooden roof structure and leave it exposed. Painted white, the rafters add height to rooms that would otherwise have felt low. They also keep a visible record of how the house was framed in 1936. The wooden partitions survive as well, and so does whitewashed masonry, now lit by a simple disc pendant.

The main room is the only space that works as a second floor. It has a wooden floor and two large work tables. Its smaller windows have shutters, which let the team control daylight on the desks, a modest and practical form of environmental control. A whitewashed stone recess holds a single spindle-back chair, part shrine and part reading nook. The rest of the programme sits at garden level on white marble, so the change in floor material quietly tells you whether you are in the old house or the new work.

Onyx, Stone and a Controlled Glow

Whitewashed stone room with glowing onyx steps, a wooden chair and a glass vase on a marble floor

Narrow gap in a rough whitewashed wall framing backlit onyx steps and a corridor with a light switch beyond

Backlit onyx panel set into a fluted white wall, with a rounded plaster edge and a globe lamp in the foreground

Hallway view toward fluted white cabinetry with an onyx-backed niche, and a thick-veined marble floor reflecting soft light

Empty white room with flush cabinetry, a black tripod side table with a curved floor lamp, and a marble floor

Floating marble vanity with wall-mounted taps beneath a large mirror, reflecting a skylight and a white rough-plastered wall

Bathroom with a wall-hung white basin, glass shower screen and marble floor, with daylight falling from a skylight

If the project has a single indulgence, it is the backlit onyx. Glowing onyx steps rise inside a whitewashed stone room. Through a narrow gap cut into a rough wall, you see the same steps lit from behind. An onyx panel sits within fluted white cabinetry. The translucent stone answers the dark, opaque granite of the old house, using the same family of material to produce the opposite effect.

The rest of the interior stays deliberately quiet: flush cabinetry, a black tripod table, thick-veined marble underfoot. The bathrooms carry the same language with a floating marble vanity, a wall-hung basin and skylights that bring daylight down onto rough white plaster. Some readers will find the onyx a touch luxurious for a rural studio. We read it as a measured counterweight to all that rubble, and it is used sparingly enough to stay special.

Plans and Drawings

Ground floor plan drawing showing a square garage volume at the street edge beside hatched neighboring buildings and a long open plot

First floor plan drawing showing office, reception, kitchen and meeting rooms arranged around a small entrance atrium, with a walled garden and three trees

Roof plan drawing showing the hipped tile roof, a flat roof with a skylight and a stone-walled garden with three trees

The plans make the split clear. The street-level plan is little more than a square garage volume pressed against the road. The upper floor plan shows the office, reception, kitchen and meeting rooms arranged around a small entrance atrium, which sits next to the existing oven and stitches old and new together. The old kitchen keeps its oven and open wood-fire chimney, so the studio's front door passes the oldest working element in the house.

Three stacked section drawings showing the pitched-roof stone house, a flat-roofed glazed extension and a long rubble garden wall, with figures for scale

Four drawings of south and north facades plus two sections, showing a tiled gabled house with a gridded glass wall and a flat-roofed addition

Exploded axonometric drawing separating roofs, upper floor and garage level of the house and extension, with the walled garden at right

Axonometric drawing showing stacked room volumes, a gabled roof and a long walled terrace with a round drain, separated by dashed vertical lines

The sections and axonometrics show the pitched-roof stone house, the flat-roofed glazed extension and the long rubble garden wall as three distinct systems. The exploded axonometric is particularly useful because it separates roofs, upper floor and garage level, and it shows how little the extension needed to touch the existing structure.

White card massing model seen from a high corner, with a small boxy volume set between a gabled house and a long terrace wall in hard sunlight

White card site model from the long side, showing a walled terrace, the central flat-roofed volumes and a gabled block, with sharp shadows on black

Top-down view of the white card model showing flat roofs with small openings beside a hipped roof and a terrace wall, in direct sun

The white card models reduce the scheme to its essentials: a gabled block, a cluster of small flat-roofed boxes with roof openings, and a long terrace wall. Seen from above, the extension reads as a set of modest rooms tucked between house and wall, which is exactly how it feels on site.

Why This Project Matters

Rural Portugal is full of small family houses that are either abandoned or "restored" into pastiche. This project offers a third route. Keep the granite, the timber roof, the oven and the street face. Then add new rooms that are honest about being new and humble in scale. The refusal to fake the old is not only a stylistic stance. It is what lets the 1936 fabric stay legible as history rather than becoming a backdrop.

It also makes a quiet case for the architect's studio as a working argument. Raulino Silva could have moved his practice to a more convenient urban address. Instead, he wrote his method into his grandparents' house: work with the constraints of the site, let the rocky ground decide where to build, and spend the budget on thresholds and light rather than volume. At 163 m², it shows how much an addition can achieve when it is small and precise.

Architecture Studio in Vila do Conde; Architect: Raulino Silva Arquitecto; Location: Santagões, Bagunte, Vila do Conde, Portugal; Area: 163 m²; Year: 2024; Photography: José Campos.

About the Studio

Raulino Silva Arquitecto

Official website of Raulino Silva Arquitecto, one of the studios behind this project.

raulinosilva.blogspot.com

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