Architectural Details: Evolving Portuguese Modernism at Casa da Levada

Casa da Levada by Tsou Arquitectos, Penafiel, Portugal | Jury & Popular Choice Winner, Sustainable Private House, 13th Architizer A+Awards

Located in a village in Paredes, with the Tâmega River as a backdrop, Casa da Levada by Tsou Arquitectos blends into the rural landscape. A green roof extends the terrain over the house, making it look like it has always belonged to the site. The green roof not only reinforces the connection between the house and the landscape, but it also improves thermal comfort inside by reducing heat gains in summer and heat loss in winter. It also buffers rainwater and supports biodiversity.

This integration of architecture and landscape should be understood as an evolutionary process. In this context, the house, moulded by the terrain, can be interpreted as an organism that emerges from it as part of the land’s transformation over time, resulting in a construction that looks grounded and enduring.

Casa da Levada by Tsou Arquitectos, Penafiel, Portugal | Jury & Popular Choice Winner, Sustainable Private House, 13th Architizer A+Awards

The design concept draws from the action of water on the soil over long periods of time, carving grooves on the terrain and creating new forms. This process evokes a time dimension where geological transformations give rise to erosion and sedimentation. In an architectural context, and in particular, with the Casa da Levada, this process is translated into volumes, openings, spatial sequences, and materials generated by the forces of nature.

Casa da Levada by Tsou Arquitectos, Penafiel, Portugal | Jury & Popular Choice Winner, Sustainable Private House, 13th Architizer A+Awards

Beneath the green roof, the house seems to have been carved out of the terrain. Massive stone walls emerge from the ground, following the topography, while openings add porosity to the solid forms. The walls are dry-laid granite wall constructions that draw on a Portuguese building tradition of agricultural terraces and boundary walls. This technique, so beautifully reinterpreted in contemporary architecture by masters such as Alvaro Siza Vieira and Eduardo Souto de Moura, anchors the project to the site and the local culture.

A deep trench, lined by these walls, evokes the water-eroded terrain that inspired the design concept. It’s the pedestrian access to the house that, in reference to the idea of geological transformation, recalls a tectonic fault. Functionally, the path separates two volumes that form the house: one dedicated to social spaces, the other to private ones. Bisecting the house into two volumes, the path ends at the central courtyard. Yet beyond its function as a spatial organizer, the path carries a poetic charge, unfolding as a processional route reminiscent of an approach to an ancient temple.

Roof plan for Casa da Levada by Tsou Arquitectos, Penafiel, Portugal | Jury & Popular Choice Winner, Sustainable Private House, 13th Architizer A+Awards

Floor plan for Casa da Levada by Tsou Arquitectos, Penafiel, Portugal | Jury & Popular Choice Winner, Sustainable Private House, 13th Architizer A+Awards

The house’s design, form, and orientation follow the topography, emphasizing the integration of landscape and architecture. Simple geometric forms, a rectilinear grid, and an orderly arrangement of rooms evoke the rationality and clarity typically associated with modernist architecture, resulting in functional legibility and structural honesty.

All the rooms have direct access to the courtyard. Like a ruined and incomplete Vitruvian patio, the courtyard offers an outdoor space for gathering, mediating between the house and the landscape. It is paved with rectangular granite blocks—one of northern Portugal’s most enduring building materials—laid out to minimize material waste.

The direct access to the courtyard and the generous use of glass enclosures create a sense of openness that contrasts with the heaviness of the building materials and compensates for the compact footprint of the house.

Casa da Levada by Tsou Arquitectos, Penafiel, Portugal | Jury & Popular Choice Winner, Sustainable Private House, 13th Architizer A+Awards

The formal clarity and precise construction make the house look rigorous yet calm, essential yet enduring. Faithful to the modernist principles, spaces — both interior and exterior — are defined by the articulation of independent vertical and horizontal planes rather than by fully enclosed volumes. Overhangs intuitively delimit outdoor rooms and frame the surrounding landscape, while glazed pocket sliding doors enhance the indoor-outdoor continuity.

Alongside this formal clarity and construction rigor, the house has a raw quality that derives from the use of natural materials, further emphasizing the connection between architecture and landscape.

Casa da Levada by Tsou Arquitectos, Penafiel, Portugal | Jury & Popular Choice Winner, Sustainable Private House, 13th Architizer A+Awards

A restrained material and color palette facilitates the integration of the house into the landscape. The exterior walls are clad in cork panels. Cork is a renewable, carbon-negative material with excellent thermal insulation performance. Over time, it weathers naturally without the need for maintenance, gradually acquiring a tone and texture that blends with the region’s yellow granite.

Unlike the irregular stereotomy of the granite walls and pavement, the cork is precisely cut to emphasize the linearity of the house form. The base of the exterior walls is finished in locally sourced granite, offering functional protection against rising damp and mechanical damage.

Casa da Levada by Tsou Arquitectos, Penafiel, Portugal | Jury & Popular Choice Winner, Sustainable Private House, 13th Architizer A+Awards

Sustainability is a guiding principle in all technical and material choices, aligning the building with its natural surroundings and reducing its environmental footprint. Glazing is carefully oriented and protected with external shading devices—such as solar louvers and shutters—to optimize thermal solar gains in winter and mitigate overheating in summer. A strategically positioned skylight with controlled opening enables cross ventilation, allowing warm air to escape naturally and drawing in cooler air through lower shaded openings. This promotes natural airflow, reduces reliance on mechanical cooling, improves indoor air quality, and enhances thermal comfort during milder seasons.

Complementing these passive measures, the interior climate is actively regulated by a water-based radiant floor system powered by a heat pump, providing both heating and cooling. The ceramic floor finish enhances the system’s efficiency by enabling faster and more effective thermal transfer. Additionally, a Controlled Mechanical Ventilation (CMV) system with a heat exchanger ensures continuous air renewal with minimal thermal losses.

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