Ultra Arquitetura Reworks a Porto Alegre House around a Brick Courtyard, a Pool Pavilion and a Eucalyptus Garden

Renovations of existing houses usually go one of two ways: the old building is wiped out under a new skin, or it is preserved so carefully that the new parts look apologetic. In Ouriques House, Ultra (Ultra Arquitetura), led and coordinated by Arthur Lauxen, takes a third route. The front facade on the street was largely kept. The rear was rebuilt completely, and the 241 m² program now runs down a long, narrow Porto Alegre lot as a sequence of house, courtyard and pavilion.

The brief was simple to state and hard to execute. The client wanted a full renovation and much more built area, and the original house had run out of space. The interesting decision is how that extra area was added. Instead of thickening the existing volume, the project spreads it out and lets the gaps between buildings do most of the work. The courtyard, the pool deck and the garden are not leftover space here. They are the rooms that hold everything else together.

A Perforated Brick Wall Holds the Street Edge

From the cobbled street, the house gives away very little: a perforated brick screen, a black timber gate and the late sun raking across both. The screen does real work on this edge. It filters light and air and reads as a garden wall rather than a defensive barrier, which matters on a residential street where a blank wall would feel hostile.

Behind it, the palette sets the tone for the whole project. Brick walls, a board-formed concrete beam and a pergola frame a patio that opens through sliding glass straight into the living room. The materials are ordinary for southern Brazil, and the project uses them plainly, without cladding them into something they are not.

The Courtyard Becomes the Real Living Room

We think the paved courtyard is the project's best move. Seen through drawn-back curtains, it reads as a continuation of the interior floor. A folding chair, a wooden stool and a person settled in for the afternoon tell you how it is used: as an outdoor lounge, not a passage between front and back.

The concrete pergola and the stepped lawn beyond give the courtyard a far edge without closing it off. On a narrow lot this is how you create depth. Each threshold steps you a little further out, and the house never feels like a corridor.

Pool, Pergola and a Brick Pavilion under the Trees

The rear of the site is where the remodeled facade pays off. A timber deck and a turquoise pool sit between brick-clad volumes under a flat concrete roof edge. The overhead view shows how tightly it is planned: deck, water and lawn fit together like a floor plan drawn in landscape.

The covered brick porch with its concrete slab roof is the quiet hero of this zone. It gives the pool somewhere shaded to retreat to, and it lets the tall trees overhead take over as the dominant vertical element. The frangipani by the stair and the eucalyptus canopy do more for this garden facade than any added architectural gesture would.

A Stone Hearth Anchors Soft Interiors

Inside, the living room is organized around a dry-laid grey stone wall that carries a concrete-clad fireplace and built-in bookshelves. It is the heaviest surface in the house, and it gives a fixed point to a room otherwise defined by glass and curtains.

The sheer curtains deserve attention. They soften the light, blur the edge between room and garden, and let the occupants decide how open the house is at any moment. That is a more flexible control system than solid shutters, and it fits a house that leans this heavily on its outdoor rooms.

Furniture Takes the Place of Partitions

Rather than add walls to the social area, the project divides it with furniture. A freestanding wood sideboard topped with open steel-framed shelving separates lounge from circulation, and two bouclé chairs face it as though it were a wall. You get zones without losing the long view or the cross-light.

The oval dining table with its stone top and carved wood base repeats the stone and timber used elsewhere in the house. The lounge chair and ottoman do the same in leather. The interior holds together because a small set of materials keeps coming back.

A Kitchen in Walnut, Marble and Terracotta

The kitchen is the warmest room in the house, and it gets there through materials, not decoration. Walnut cabinets, a marble counter and backsplash, and terracotta floor tiles are lit from above by a slanted skylight. The skylight brings daylight deep into a plan that, on a narrow lot, might otherwise go dim in the middle.

A round wooden table sits right at the glass doors, so the kitchen opens straight onto the lawn. This is not a service room tucked away at the back. It is placed for breakfast in the garden, and the open shelves keep it feeling lived in rather than staged.

Private Rooms Tuned to Daylight

The bedrooms follow the same logic as the living spaces: sheer curtains, a sliding door straight onto the lawn, and dappled light across the floor. The dressing corridor is the exception that proves the rule. It is a narrow passage of slatted timber wardrobe doors, finished with a pebble-shaped mirror on a blue wall, and it shows the designers were willing to be playful where the space is small enough to take it.

The office and bathroom use frosted windows for privacy without giving up daylight. The timber desk, cubby shelving and slatted vanity tie these rooms back to the joinery language of the main house, and the glazed beige tile gives the bathroom a crafted surface instead of a sterile one.

Plans and Drawings

The axonometric makes the strategy clear: a front house, a central courtyard with trees and a rear pavilion, laid along a long, narrow plot. The roof plan shows the large central roof volume and the rectangular pool between stepped terraces. The floor plan places living and dining, the suites, kitchen and laundry so that most rooms face an outdoor area.

The sections show a single-storey building that follows the slope of the site under a shallow pitched roof, with a small volume set uphill. Eucalyptus trees appear in nearly every drawing, which tells you the architects treated the trees as fixed elements of the scheme. The street elevation, with its sliding gate and row of ferns, confirms how restrained the public face was meant to be.

Why This Project Matters

Brazilian cities are full of mid-century and later houses on narrow lots that no longer fit how families live. Ouriques House offers a useful model. Keep the street face, rebuild the back, and add area by spreading it across the site in separate volumes, not by stacking it. The result is more built space that still feels like it has room to breathe.

What we value most is the restraint. Brick, concrete, stone, walnut and terracotta carry the whole project, and none of them is pushed beyond what it does well. The house gets its new identity from how its rooms open to courtyard, pool and trees, not from a signature form. For a renovation brief, that is the right priority.

Ouriques House by Ultra (Ultra Arquitetura), lead architect Arthur Lauxen. Porto Alegre, Brazil. 241 m². Completed 2025. Photography by Roberta Gewehr.

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