Three concrete semicircles sit cut into a hillside in Sobral de Monte Agraço, Portugal. From a distance, only their windows and bright blue chimneys give them away. Porto studio Fala Atelier designed the Cookie Cutter Retreat as a digital nomad retreat portugal base for remote workers.
The complex covers 500 square metres across three buildings. They hold a private house, a shared dwelling and an adaptable hall. Grass roofs top each volume, so the slope seems to continue over the top of the architecture.
Sinking buildings into the land raises the same questions as Casa Cieno’s coastal home amid Oaxaca’s landscape, which takes a similarly landscape-led approach.
How the volumes meet the slope
The buildings share one geometry but come in three sizes, labelled S, M and L. Each size follows the programme it serves. The hall is the largest, and the house and shared dwelling are smaller.
Across the complex, each curved wall works as a retaining structure, holding back the earth. The straight side opens into a wide glazed façade facing the view. Fala Atelier says the three buildings relate to the site, the slope and one another with considerable freedom, without a rigid overall composition.
The studio describes the arrangement as “a fluid game”. Its placement, it says, turns the landscape into something that moves with the visitor.
How the retreat is organised
Interiors built from other architects’ plans
A diagonal wall cuts through each semicircle. It separates the public zone from the private one. Behind the wall, the interiors are compact, dense and full of small rooms.
Those rooms borrow from houses by Frank Gehry, Toyo Ito and Álvaro Siza. Fala Atelier calls the borrowed plan fragments “objets trouvés“, reusing their internal formal relationships almost exactly. The studio says each volume places a dense set of small rooms beside an expansive, almost empty space.
Divisare reads the contrast as a deliberate collision. On one side sits the open void of the semicircle. On the other sits a tightly packed interior imported from elsewhere, which Divisare describes as almost baroque. The compact labyrinth behind each diagonal cut is Divisare’s term, not the studio’s.
Within the retreat, the hall, the largest of the three, was designed to “host almost any activity”. Its front is open plan. The private spaces behind it are finished in white-painted and tile-clad walls. Blue and fluorescent-yellow details break up the surfaces.
The same materials and colours repeat throughout the site. Ceilings are exposed concrete, covered by a dense grid of Minase lamps. Round concrete columns mark the threshold between inside and outside. One thick column, painted blue with white stripes, appears again and again in the glass.
The exposed concrete here echoes a bolder use of the material in Yvonne Mak’s eco-friendly floating concrete castle, which shows how far the medium can be pushed.
Designarcus notes that the terrain was excavated extensively so the architecture could settle into the slope. The irony is not lost on Divisare. The site was dug out so the buildings, a clear case of portugal architecture, could nearly vanish. Granite stones found on site now form places to sit, gather or wander.
The studio puts the logic in one line. “The consistency allows the differences to become more intriguing,” it says. Three near-identical shapes, one palette and three distinct sizes make that argument in concrete and glass.
H/T dezeen.com
Frequently asked questions
Who designed the Cookie Cutter Retreat and what is it for?
Porto studio Fala Atelier designed the Cookie Cutter Retreat as a base for remote workers, known as digital nomads. The complex covers 500 square metres across three buildings: a private house, a shared dwelling and an adaptable hall.
Why are the retreat’s buildings partly built into the hillside?
The three semicircular volumes are sunk into the slope, and grass roofs top each one so the hillside appears to continue over the architecture. Each curved wall also acts as a retaining structure, holding back the earth.
Where do the interior room layouts at the retreat come from?
The compact interior rooms borrow plan fragments from houses by Frank Gehry, Toyo Ito and Álvaro Siza. The studio calls these borrowed fragments “objets trouvés” and reuses their internal formal relationships almost exactly.
What are the three buildings at the retreat called and how do they differ?
The buildings share one semicircular geometry but come in three sizes, labelled S, M and L, with each size following the programme it serves. The hall is the largest, while the house and shared dwelling are smaller.
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