There is an umbilical relationship between the ‘problem’ and the ‘solution’, and the greater the degree of definition and understanding of the problem, the greater the ability to validate its solution. Architectural production requires this strict relationship, the appropriate search for the answer to a specific question.

The goal was to develop a product that was simple, appealing and comfortable, that responded to the needs of the market while respecting a contemporary way of ‘living’ and that the costs associated with its execution were in line with reality.

The Box Houses are located on a plot of land in the centre of Guimarães, in an urban context characterised by single-family homes. Although the typological ‘rule’ is mostly residential, in its immediate surroundings, a factory unit expresses itself with great ‘authority’, visually heavy, with a huge mass and built front, which in a way ‘suffocates’ its surroundings.

The proposal then involves trying to ‘’coexist‘’ in a ‘’passive‘’ way with the ‘’authoritarian‘’ volumetry of the factory unit, trying to ensure that the placement of the 4 houses cancelled out the existence of this body to a certain extent, turning towards the ‘’secondary‘’ access street.

The simplicity allowed in the interior treatment is itself absorbed and understood in the exterior materiality, through the use of a parallelepiped volumetry (box), sober, set down in a natural way, adapting to the street slope. The houses seek a visual force in their very essence, an affirmation of place and space cohabiting.