Dream Houses is a curated exploration of domestic architecture where vision, craft, and innovation converge. Each residence is shaped by light, materiality, and intent revealing homes that transcend function to become expressions of a deeply personal yet enduring way of living.
Set on the last vacant plot along São Miguel’s southern coast, Casa da Rocha Quebrada by SO Arquitetura & Design reconsiders the idea of the dream house as a monolithic concrete presence. Conceived as both a new ruin and a sequence of inhabitable caves, the house balances raw materiality with quiet domestic warmth, standing as a restrained yet powerful extension of the Atlantic landscape.
“An essential house. That’s how we like to describe it. It’s not minimalist, nor brutalist. It’s simply what it needs to be,” say the architects.
Neither minimalist nor brutalist in intent, Casa da Rocha Quebrada by SO Arquitetura & Design is defined by what it needs to be: precise, durable, and deeply connected to its context.
Here, domestic architecture is shaped by matter, proportion and the quiet intelligence of restraint.
The project emerged within an intimate framework, designed for the parents of one of the studio’s founders.
This condition allowed a rare balance of freedom and responsibility, enabling a design process free from excess and guided by clarity of purpose.
Situated on the last empty plot along a stretch of São Miguel’s southern coast, the house assumes a dual role—closing the urban block while simultaneously establishing itself as a natural extension of the volcanic rock that characterizes the landscape.
In response to the harsh Atlantic environment, exposed concrete became the defining material choice.
Resistant to salt, wind, and time, it forms a mineral envelope that appears almost carved rather than constructed. Toward the street, the house presents itself as a compact mass articulated through a controlled composition of solids and recesses. Openings are deep and protected, revealing little of the interior life.
From the outside, the volume evokes the ambiguity of a contemporary ruin, a sequence of inhabitable cavities embedded in the Rocha Quebrada.
Yet this apparent austerity conceals a carefully calibrated interior atmosphere. Wood surfaces introduce warmth and tactility, counterbalancing the cool density of the concrete shell. The spatial organization is intentionally simple: three bedrooms and a fluid social area structured around a central patio that cuts through the volume.
This void becomes the climatic and spatial core of the house, ensuring natural ventilation, filtered daylight, and a continuous dialogue between interior and exterior.
On the southern façade, the house opens toward the ocean with measured discretion. Rather than framing panoramic gestures, the structure filters views through its depth and geometry, allowing the presence of the sea to be constant yet subdued. From the natural pools below, the building appears silent and introverted—stone, light, and shadow in equilibrium with the landscape.
As part of a broader understanding of the dream house, Casa da Rocha Quebrada transcends function through its commitment to material honesty and contextual integration. It does not seek prominence, but permanence; not expression through excess, but through precision.
In this sense, the dwelling becomes less an object placed on the site and more an architecture that concludes the block while belonging, almost inevitably, to the rock itself.
Facts & Credits
Project title Casa da Rocha Quebrada
Typology Residential
Location Lagoa, São Miguel, Açores
Architecture SO Arquitetura & Design
Main Architect Bruno Furtado e Gonçalo Blétière Lopes
Year of conclusion 2024
Total area 315 m2
Builder Tecnicouto, Lda
Ιnspection SO Arquitetura & Design
Engineering Teorema Contínuo – Unipessoal Lda
Landscape SO Arquitetura & Design
Light Design TECNIQ
Acoustic Design Roberto Aguiar
Fluids Engineering Roberto Aguiar
Thermal Engineering Roberto Aguiar
Interior Design SO Arquitetura & Design
Photography Ivo Tavares Studio
Text provided by the architects
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