Boa Nova Tea House renewed by Álvaro Siza Vieira

The architect Álvaro Siza Vieira has renewed ‘The Boa Nova Tea House, was designed following a competition held in 1956 by the city council and won by Portuguese architect Fernando Tavora, turned the project over to his collaborator, Álvaro Siza.
One of Siza’s first built projects, it is significant that the restaurant is not far from the town of Matosinhos where the architect grew up, and set in a landscape that he was intimately familiar with.
The building is accessed from a nearby parking lot through a system of platforms and stairs, eventually leading to an entry sheltered by a very low roof and massive boulders characteristic to the site.
This architectural promenade, a sinuous path clad in white stone and lined by painted concrete walls, presents several dramatic perspectives of the landscape as it alternatively hides and reveals the sea and the horizon line.
The restaurant’s west facing dining room and tea room are set just above the rocks, and joined by a double height atrium and stair, with the entrance being on a higher level.
The kitchen, storage and employee areas are half sunken in the back of the building, marked only by a narrow window and a mast-like chimney clad in colored tiles.
Forming a butterfly in plan, the two primary spaces open gently around the sea cove, their exterior walls following the natural topography of the site. The tea room has large windows above an exposed concrete base, while the dining room is fully glassed, leading to an outdoor plateau.
In both rooms, the window frames can slide down beneath the floor, leaving the long projecting roof eaves in continuum with the ceiling. This creates an amazing effect in the summer, when it is possible to walk out from the dining room directly to the sea, as the building seems to disappear.
Legend has it that years ago, The Boa Nova was fully restored in 1991 following a heavy storm, the sea came crashing through both rooms of the tea house, taking with it furniture and destroying most of the interior, but now again fully renovated with its original characteristics as ceilings, frames, furniture, all designed by Siza.
Location: Matosinhos, Portugal
Architect: Álvaro Siza Vieira
Originally built: 1963
Year renovated: 2014
Photographs: Joao Morgado