Sá Townhouse
Aveiro’s Art Nouveau heritage is a defining layer of its urban identity. In direct dialogue with a house by Francisco Augusto Silva Rocha, the Sá Townhouse reinterprets this legacy through contemporary means. Set back from the street, it echoes the proportions, rhythms, and material language of its predecessor while asserting its own time. Drawing on local references (from Art Nouveau to salt warehouses and Palheiros) the project affirms continuity and belonging, offering a restrained and contextual response to the city’s layered history.
Aveiro preserves within its urban fabric many of the most emblematic examples of Art Nouveau in Portugal, a heritage legacy that today stands as one of the clearest expressions of the city’s identity.
Art Nouveau, upon its emergence, was the subject of fierce criticism -deemed excessive, functionally superfluous, costly, and out of step with the demands of the emerging modern society. It was swiftly supplanted by Art Deco, the rational pragmatism of the Modern Movement, and systematically erased (both physically and symbolically) without hesitation. Only in the second half of the twentieth century would Art Nouveau begin to be reappraised and recovered: the celebration of the distant past (and the devaluation of the present and the more recent past) has been a recurring impulse in the history of our civilisation, albeit one that is no less equivocal for that.
And yet, it has always been in this way that cities have taken shape -in layers, in superimpositions, in revisitations- and it is precisely from this stratification of voices and periods that the richness of the urban experience arises. In this sense, Aveiro stands as a paradigm of that palimpsestic condition.
On the very street where he would later design his own residence, architect Francisco Augusto Silva Rocha (the central figure in the establishment of this language in the city) conceived, at the dawn of the twentieth century, a discreet yet dignified building. Among its most distinctive elements, the ground floor features a round window framed in stonework that defines the compositional axis, while the first floor is punctuated by openings adorned with floral motifs, leading the gaze upward to a ceramic frieze interspersed with stone triglyphs that crown the façade. In the attic storey, a small gabled window with a sculpted female face reinforces the quiet narrative that constitutes the singular expression of the ensemble.
Typologically, the façade follows a pattern widely repeated throughout the city: two floors articulated by three vertical bays, topped by a central attic window.
It is in direct dialogue with this building that the Sá Townhouse takes form.
Set on a vacant plot, the Sá Townhouse resumes, in volume, materiality, and composition, the architectural lexicon of Silva Rocha’s house, echoing the vertical and horizontal rhythms of the façade, the height alignments, the geometry of the roof, and the five-part organisation of the elevation.
It retains the familiar scheme of two floors, three bays, and a central attic window, along with a rear upper patio, a configuration common both to the street and across the city.
In a gesture of restraint, the new volume is set slightly back from the street alignment, as if speaking only after listening. In doing so, it establishes a deliberate and attentive dialogue, where the new extends the pre-existing legacy without seeking to overshadow it.
The technical niche beneath a generous oculus references the distinctive round window that, in Silva Rocha’s house, sits above the letterbox.
Deliberately citing the pre-existing house, the materiality of Sá Townhouse draws direct parallels with it: limestone defines the base, while ceramic tiles sheath the ground floor, reflecting textures and techniques of the original building. In the upper storeys, ironwork and timber subtly reinterpret earlier constructive solutions, offering a contemporary reading of a historical vocabulary.
Though deeply anchored in the model that precedes it, Sá Towhnouse affirms itself as a project of its time, seeking to establish correspondences in scale and design with its predecessor through contemporary choices.
At the same time, it belongs unmistakably to Aveiro, not only through its direct reference to the original house, but also more broadly through its evocation of the timber façades of the city’s former salt warehouses and, more subtly, the graphic rhythms and primitive colour palette of the Ria’s traditional Palheiros.
Sá Townhouse comprises two distinct dwellings: a compact one-bedroom rental apartment on the ground floor, opening onto a rear patio through a wide glazed surface; and the main residence, which unfolds between the first floor and attic.
In the upper dwelling, a central skylight traverses both floors, resolving the depth of the plot. Its axis aligns with the entrance hall, marking the moment of arrival and softly illuminating both vertical circulations with a light that is at once direct and diffuse, almost scenographic.
The social spaces face south, opening onto the street and benefiting from natural light filtered through timber slats. The master suite, in contrast, retreats to the quieter, more private rear façade.
On the upper floor, two bedrooms occupy either end (one taking advantage of the central window crowning the main façade, the other opening onto a raised rear patio) with technical areas, circulation, and a study space arranged between them.
The proposal is grounded in the use of local materials and durable, low-maintenance solutions.
The stones (granite, limestone, and marble) are quarried and processed in Portugal; the pinewood is of national origin, as are the hardware, paints, and other materials and finishes.
Ceramic cladding, sanitaryware, and taps are locally manufactured, reinforcing the rootedness of the project in its place.
In a territory marked by vacant plots and the anonymous presence of undifferentiated residential buildings erected around the turn of the twenty-first century, interspersed here and there with survivals from the decades surrounding 1900, the Sá Townhouse rises assertively, establishing an attentive dialogue with its setting and its built history, asserting its right to contemporaneity and formal autonomy.
More than a building, the Sá Townhouse presents itself as an essay on continuity and belonging, offering clues for future interventions: a gesture where memory and the present meet, and where architecture becomes a tool for listening -to the past, to the future, to the street, the city, everyday life, and its circumstances.