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12 Casas is located in a peripheral area of the city of Braga with no relevant urban references. The developer was about to start building nine individual houses when the economic crisis hit and we were called in to develop a new strategy.

Our proposal consists of twelve houses of smaller dimensions, designed as a single volume, economically viable, affordable to potential buyers.

This change led us to radical design decisions – it required that the parking floor would be buried with a single car access that connects all the individual garages. On one side of the plot, the access ramp, on the opposite, a vertical access core to fulfil the required legal demands.

This decision allowed us to free up the ground level and make the best use of the outside space as usable area for each houses.

Parallel walls run across the length of the plot dividing and defining each house as well as supporting the upper floor single monolithic volume. Facing the street, another wall of the same height, continuous, and only punctuated by the individual entrances, creates a private courtyard for each house that together with the south garden, makes them completely open to the outside at the ground floor level.

The first floor encloses the more private areas of the house - three bedrooms as required by the developer - and a second courtyard that allows the southern and western light to flow throughout the open stairway acting as a ventilation system during summer time.