Entre Portas restaurant - Pinhel, Portugal

Entre Portas, may not be Porto-based architectural practice DepA’s first project in Pinhel, in the rolling hills of northwestern Portugal, but it is one of its most intriguing. A restaurant and café occupying a renovated traditional tile-roofed home, the open-plan space is larger within than it appears from without, for not only have internal walls and ceilings been removed but the bedrock has been excavated in order to add space.

Divided into an upper restaurant and lower café bar level, where it is not coated in a thick, marshmallowy layer of white render, the minimal interior is dominated by almost brutal concrete walls, partially clad in so seamless a fashion that the blonde wood reads as a continuation of the formwork patterns left in the concrete during construction.

In places, most notably the bathrooms, the bedrock is left exposed, as if to prevent the light, airy interior from floating away.