After weeks of fruitless searching for a place to call home in the seaside Portuguese city of Porto, an American couple got a hard sell from their realtor about a property: “It’s a little different, but it’s just weird enough that it might be right for you.”

Braddlee recalls the realtor’s words with a warm laugh. Three years ago, he and his husband, Reginald “Prince Pendarvis” Seale, a dancer from Compton, California, via various East and West Coast underground dance scenes, left Northern Virginia, where they’d lived for six years for Braddlee’s job in higher education.

Prince says that as an interracial, intergenerational gay couple, they had long found the States stifling, so they decided to look far afield for a new home as Braddlee retired. In the summer of 2019, the couple took a recon trip that included Madrid, Lisbon, and Porto, and the latter option stole their hearts; by December, they were renting a place on Portugal’s coast while looking at potential permanent homes.

The property their realtor found was indeed different: a 1970s former storefront that, after more than a decade of vacancy, was more of a concrete bunker than a livable building. “The backyard was just pavement and weeds,” Braddlee says, again cracking a smile. “So naturally we said we’d take it.”

In reality, drawings that local architecture firm Fala had done for the previous owners of the lot closed the sale for the couple. Yes, the property presented challenges aplenty. The two-story house is naturally dark, with buildings on either side blocking most natural light; the narrow footprint lends itself uneasily to rooms or privacy—but Fala’s proposals were exciting and left-field.

“I want people who come to this house to walk away saying, ‘Wow, that was memorable.’ ’’
—Prince Seale, resident

Two of the biggest changes were glass-brick walls running across both floors. The sinuous partitions emphasize the house’s length—it’s so long that Prince, who competes in fashion categories in the local vogue scene, uses the upstairs hall as a practice runway—while separating shared spaces from more private ones.

Upstairs, the primary suite is on one side, while the kitchen, living, and dining spaces are on the other. Downstairs, light from a bathroom, the second bedroom, and the study passes through the wall to help the half-sunken level feel bright even on dark days.

Fala, which is known internationally for its conceptual but playful approach, worked closely with Braddlee and Prince to infuse the design with the couple’s essence. The architects drafted dozens of ideas for the front facade, eventually settling on a series of graphic metal screens that Filipe Magalhães, a cofounder of Fala, lovingly refers to as “Super Mario clouds.” Inside, red accents and oversize spherical drawer pulls are almost absurd against the white tile floors and subdued seating (some also designed by Fala).

It’s not the home that the couple had originally imagined they’d find in this centuries-old city, but it turns out to be exactly what they wanted. “Life is short,” Prince muses. “I wanted an experience.”

Read about the Fala Atelier founders’ recently renovated live/work space:

Three Porto Architects Live and Work Together in One Playfully Pragmatic Building

Project Credits:

Architecture: Fala

Engineering: Civiflanco

Landscape Design: Pomo

—

Head back to the July/August 2022 issue homepage

Appears In

An American Couple Turn a Portuguese Storefront Into Their Dream Home