Orange House

For a long time, the Orange House in Carreço seemed quite strange to a lot of people. Strange to the patient owner who wanted a beach house and got an urban one; strange to the unpleasant neighbour who, from the other side of the street, kept a suspicious surveillance, facing the gaze of the 'monster's' only eye. Strange to the brave structural engineer who prayed that the almost eight-metre balcony cantilever would not collapse. And yet, what was so strange became familiar after all. Now finished, the house is orange on the outside but quiet when you see it from the inside - like an 'inverted egg', a kind of perversion of the normal building process: white concrete inside, coloured plaster outside. The proud structural engineer is now using the long balcony as a case study for his civil engineering university course and the besieged neighbour has lost his 'battle' and hasn't been seen since (swallowed by the monster perhaps?). Times, like colours and people, keep changing.