José Cadilhe

José Cadilhe. Casa em Póvoa de Varzim, Portugal, 2006-7. photographer: Fernando Guerra

This house, another photographed by Fernando Guerra, appears to be built on a standard lot, the house pushed forward to the streetwall, faced with steel (maybe aluminum, I can't find out) shutters which can open up entirely to an articulated glass front with balconies and slilding doors.  The back of the house is all glass, held in a concrete frame; the back yard is an austere plane of grass, little white cubic pavilion at the end. 

There is something about Portugal and surfaces: on one side are plain gloriously turquoise tiles, on the other patterned tiles.  Póvoa de Varzim is a town on the Atlantic coast, on the northern reaches of Porto.  It appears, from various website descriptions to be a Venice California sort of place: beaches and skaters. Once a serious port, now a mild seaside town. 

It must be the weather. Although northern Portugal is not Mediterranean by any stretch, it doesn't have this climatic clamp down on ways of living.  One can have an idea such as this punched steel screen, and then actually do it.