The rolling hills of this picturesque corner of Paradinha, Portugal, have long been nearly empty, except for a small, formerly abandoned village. Recently, newcomers moved in to build the Paradinha Village Resort, offering nearby city dwellers a tranquil nature retreat accessed by narrow roads that criss-cross through the mountains.
“This project was an opportunity to make new experiences within the Gomos building system: in each house, all the technical installations (water, electricity, and climatization) were concentrated in just one module and extended to the other models externally,” the architects say. “This procedure was standardly repeated in the whole project, accelerating its production/assembly process.”
The building system consists of concrete modular elements that simplify the building process. Derived from the way ordinary sewer pipes are constructed, the system is redesigned in order to make it habitable while preserving the stability and rapid deployment abilities of the concrete shells. It takes just a few days to assemble the buildings once they arrive on site.
The company calls this system “evolutionary,” explaining that each module leaves the factory completely ready to live in, including all interior and exterior finishes, insulation, windows, water and electricity, and even built-in furniture. The system is designed to be flexible, so the structures can be sized up or down or given slightly different proportions according to the user’s needs.
In Paradinha, this translates to a series of angular modern buildings sheltered from the harsh sunlight and set at just the right angles to take advantage of the views. To the casual observer, the location of each one may seem a bit random, as if they were scattered across the plot and allowed to remain where they fell. But in reality, they were carefully arranged to follow the contours of the landscape and create privacy for the inhabitants of each one.
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