This house in Lisbon might be built from concrete, but it’s far from brutal.

Bak Gordon Arquitectos designed the four-bedroom property in 2010, on a site in the Santa Isabel district of the city formerly occupied by industrial sheds. Hidden from street view, its solid concrete edifice is broken by a discreet yellow door which leads into the villa.

‘We built a house with very regular and hierarchical spaces – the voids – around which the programmatic living spaces gravitated,’ explains Gordon. This translates into a series of cube-like living spaces that unfurl around five courtyards, sculpted with pools and ponds.

Parts of the building’s rough exterior have been covered by green climbing plants, which add to the single-storey structure’s craggy aesthetic.

Inside, starkness has been offset by enormous modular steel-framed windows which open onto the courtyard, flooding the property with light, as well as brightly coloured kitchen cabinets.

The property is available to rent direct.

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