They named it Casa Azul (Blue House), but Pedro says that a friend, who is a poet, calls it Casa Poema (Poem House). Ricardo Bak Gordon, who designed it for his friend, appreciates the home’s ability to emerge from the horizontality of the landscape and perceives it as “a deep dive into the Alentejo” (because there’s a whole sensory side involved in its creation). Although we’re going to talk about architecture, poetry is an artistic manifestation that may or may not be founded on words, and so the boundary between one and the other may be tenuous.
The story began like this: Pedro had some friends with a house in the Alentejo where good times were often shared. Destiny would have it that they wanted to leave that house in search of a new place, and during that quest, they found four adjoining plots of land. Inspired by such good memories, Pedro bought one of the plots. Ricardo Bak Gordon went along with Pedro when he made his choice and he was so impressed by the setting, that he made his first drawings on his return.

The plot, located on the northern side but with a southerly view, inspired Ricardo Bak Gordon to produce an initial vision – a resonance box of the landscape. “It was as if it were the culmination or the starting point of something greater than the project itself, and that it would be the gathering of these four families that would somehow resonate at this high point”, he explains.
Together with the resonance box – which was materialised as a wall in the shape of an embrace that encompasses what is going to happen – a “water box” was then conceived, inspired by the irrigation tanks and reservoirs of the region. The ensemble is finished off with two al fresco rooms – one to the east and the other to the west. Between these two rooms, the social areas of the home are found, sensitively opening up to the outside. The bedrooms are arranged around an inner courtyard, each facing a different direction, and each having a small private terrace.