This Beautiful Rammed Earth Small House will Make You Want to Escape the City
This Small House, called the Hobbit House for its small size, is located in the region of Alentejo in Central/Southern Portugal and has been redesigned my Michael. Michael’s mother-in-law bought the house together with the main house right beside it many years ago – it used to be for the cattle and she remodeled it together with a friend who was an expert in organic construction. Turning out too much work for her to maintain the house, she gave it over to Michael and his wife.
The house is made out of taipa, Portuguese for rammed earth, a traditional way of building houses in that region of Portugal: you pick up mud, add water to it and subsequently put it into wooden frames, pushing it down with a pillar until it nicely compresses. Once it dries it becomes very hard, but to strengthen it even more, one can add chalk in between the layers of mud. Most of the houses in that part of Portugal are made with this material, as it keeps the houses warm in winter and fresh in summer. Michael got most of the materials from the land around and the costliest thing in the end was manpower.
Michael used to work as a designer for twenty years and decided to quit his job in order to focus fully on this and the other house. There was a lot of work to be done, as the earthen structure of the house tends to move a lot over time, getting cracks which regularly have to be maintained, fixed and painted over.
In front of the entry is a beautiful porch with an eating area, a sofa and a hammock. It is made out of greeted wood and stones from the property. The rooftop has traditional red tiles and the whole house is plastered with chalk, as the organic walls would reject cement. The window and door frames are among the most special pieces of the house: beautifully decorated with plywood pieces glued onto each other. All the decorative structure around the frames are made out of straw and cob, which they modelled around as they liked, giving the place an artistic feeling.
The house consists of two rooms. The kitchens is at the same time the living room and the dining room. The counter top and other smaller shelves were made out of trees from the property. A (literal) highlight are the sinks in the kitchen and in the bathroom: shiny brass which need to be polished continuously in order not to turn green.
The electricity comes from their second house close by, driving the main appliances of the house which are a normal oven, a small fridge, a water boiler and the heating. Source of heat in winter are a small wood stove in the kitchen corner and electrical heaters. The floor is made out of traditional, red tiles called “Santa Catarina”, from the region and keeps the moisture coming from the ground.
The second room of the house is the bedroom with a half-open bathroom in it. The shower cabin is one of the most special features of the house. It is made out of straw and mud, covered with chalk, which gives it a very organic shape – it feels like taking a shower in a cocoon shell. Michael and his wife used to live in this house for 6 months a year with their first kid, the house being just big enough for three people. The insulation is made out of cork, which is not aggressive like other insulation materials, and in addition a Portuguese product. The thick walls also give the house nice acoustics, creating a feeling of being inside a shell, making it more cozy especially at night.
“If you're really into it, look for a piece of land and then just start bit by bit. You don't need a lot of money to do it, just buy something smaller and put your hands to work. Step by step, weekend by weekend, vacation by vacation. Things are possible and if you really like the countryside, it's always a good choice. You lose some things, obviously, but you gain so much more: peace of mind, rest, all this green, pure air – also a lot of challenges, but you will figure it out.”
