Belgium-based interior design practice, Studio Corkinho, designed Barreiro, a private home located on the south bank of the Tagus river estuary, in the district of Setúbal, the municipality of Barreiro is part of the metropolitan area of Lisbon. This project aimed to re-purpose a 2-floor adjacent house on a street angle into one singular monolithically artist residence. Control of room illumination adapts to the emotional quality of the space. It presupposes the importance of light in the art of traveling inward.
The semi-darkness of the interior suggests remoteness and refuge. It tempers all features of the rooms and blends them into harmony. The limited view of the outside produces a glimpse of the macrocosm, by symbolically establishing a relation between man’s moral perceptions and the universe. All furniture pieces are the source of true local craftsmanship. The soul of modern custom-made furniture pieces is a symbol of heritage to Portuguese tradition. The use of patina and materials aim at suggesting the atmosphere of a shelter of the artist’s mind with its remoteness, primitiveness, humbleness, simplicity, and semi-darkness.
The physique of this archaic body is infinite in its purest spiritual perception, an immense source for the exercise of the art of stillness. It reveals abundant richness by substantiating humble poverty. A hidden stairway will lead finally to the rooftop, where the morphology of this space aims at simplification to the very point where the subject and object can no longer be dualistically conceived.
The layered tone on tone surfaces has a particularly rough, earthen texture with no visible attempt to compensate for unevenness in the handicraft technique. The design approach focuses on 1 function per spatial identity, allowing a fluid flow to orchestrate stillness through space.
Every transition is articulated by the Japanese concept of the “negative space” called “ma”. It’s the space “in-between” where emptiness occurs to purify the awareness of the present moment. Inspired by the archaic organization of a Japanese floorplan to optimize the spatial flow by integrating all storage within monolithic volumes around a secluded void as a manifestation that conceptual limitations such as space do not exist for the truly enlightened. This Barreiro artist residence is secluded, boldly isolated from the outside world, a space free from any intrusion.
