House in Minho is a 16th century house located in Minho, Portugal, completely redesigned and extended in 2021 by Germano de Castro Pinheiro Arquitectos.

Description
The greatest challenge of the project development, was the guiding intent to respect and recover the ancient memory of the site, reconciling it with the intervention we were to carry out.

On the site existed a 16th century construction that had been adulterated by successive additions, made throughout the 20th century, without any architectural or historical significance. In consequence, the first gesture was to identify and recover the original traces of this construction.
Secondly, conditioned by the intent to respect the primitive construction, the insertion of the necessary functional program would have to be made in newly constructed volumes, releasing the historical heritage of the site. Therefore, the final composition resulted in the articulation of three distinct volumes:

The original construction, maintaining its image and materiality through the recovery of the stone walls and its decorative elements. The singularity of this construction and its implantation on the site, was used to emphasize the main entrance;

A prominent contemporary volume, where a new set of bedrooms was developed on the upper floor, sought to establish a strong relationship with the primitive construction by respecting its dimensions, not exceeding it volumetrically, as well as through its relative placem...