Twin Villa - architect Armando Martins - 1959/63

Sad and abandoned this Twin Villa - a design by architect Armando Martins (from 1959-63) - stands waiting for a new life. Once built on the Rua de Olivencia as a residence for the magistrates at the new court of Olhão.

They are in a miserable state, but you can still see the beauty that once radiated from these two houses. With their slender horizontal façade structure and the open canopy at the front, where a palm tree once proudly passed through and now tries to survive.

For the architect the design was his personal response to the so characteristic "'white cubism' of Olhão. In which he gives shape to in an - particularly for residential constructions - unusual way in the Algarve.

Photograph: Isabel Macieira a.o.