Casa Âmago is a single-story residence in Ansião, Portugal, by Bruno Dias Arquitectura. The site previously held 2 small ruined houses with no distinctive architectural character. Rather than renovating structures that had nothing worth preserving, or designing a house entirely disconnected from the neighborhood, the project works from a different starting point: the wall and gate facing the street give little away about what is inside, and the house organizes itself around what the exterior deliberately does not show.

The organizing element is a central patio. Âmago is the Portuguese word for marrow, core, or focal point, and the patio functions in exactly those terms: every space in the house connects to it and takes its orientation from it. The main entrance on the east opens directly to the social zone, which includes the living room, kitchen, and barbecue area, and faces west toward the garden to receive afternoon and early evening light when the space is most used. Along the north side, the service and technical rooms (gym, study, laundry, utility room, and service bathroom) connect to a secondary northern patio that provides ventilation and natural light to these spaces without requiring them to open to the main garden or the street.

The private quarters are separated from the social zone by a bespoke furniture piece in the living room that provides both the division and a degree of privacy without a conventional partition wall. The suite and 2 bedrooms face the western garden. The 3rd bedroom, shared bathroom, and private bathroom face the main patio to the east. Each of the 2 private bathrooms opens onto its own small patio, providing daylight and natural ventilation to rooms that would otherwise be internal.