Somewhere in Afife

The film about the most recent project of the architect Guilherme Machado Vaz, produced by Building Pictures, portrays the last day of Summer at ‘Casa em Afife'.

The film starts by contextualizing the house, with the landscape of Portugal’s North Coast, and id getting closer to the house, until entering into the interior of a compact and vertical volume. As the architect mentions it, “it evokes the essence of a traditional construction type of Minho”.

‘Somewhere in Afife’ is marked by the camera movements, the movements of the people, and the movements of the facade throughout a day in the house. When the shutters are closed, the architect says: "The facade is the negation of itself, it is an anti-facade", an abstract white cube without any gaps. When the shutters are opened, they reveal an interior with different materialities that are inspired by vernacular architecture. The shutters of the south elevation (facing the chapel) evoke the gilded woodcarving and also remind, in an abstract way, the medieval religious paintings in a triptych.

While being guided by the steps of a character, we discover the interior of the house, which evolves on half floors - a clear reference to the architect Adolf Loos.

The film ends with nightly pictures of the house, revealing the lighting of its interior and the circular pool.