Mori House

The design concept really was from Aires Mateus himself. Other architects and people have talked about his work being ruins of the future and I think this house here really has those bones of that.

He had these very strong principles about the form, the layout, the scale, the power of the walls and the openings. Even though we pushed him a few times we really came back to see his views of how he saw the world and how he saw this house to be.

The basis of the crucifix works well and whilst it doesn't have a formal entry and most people come through the back door or through the kitchen door, which is a very crucial part of this house because the kitchen is always producing food, breakfast, lunch and dinner when we're down here and very much around the family meal table is where we spend most of our time.

We like to build things for longevity and whilst I look at this house and yes it probably has a fairly high carbon footprint. But the idea here is that it requires no maintenance, we'll be here for a long time and I think we need to evaluate that in our buildings as to how long and how much maintenance a building requires over its lifetime to really measure the correct carbon footprint.