Casa Salgadas

Casa Salgadas has belonged to the Pereira family since it was built, and the family has a rule: nothing gets pulled down without being argued about first. The house was built in the Portuguese style that still lines the Majorda coast — laterite walls, a deep verandah, a clay-tile hip roof pitched low to shed the monsoon.

The argument this time was about the sea. The rooms facing it had been closed off for decades — shuttered against heat, then against sound, then simply out of habit. The clients, the fourth generation, wanted the sea back.

The renovation removed a layer of accretions rather than any wall that mattered. The verandah was re-floored in the same red laterite as the original, its columns cleaned back to the terracotta. The front rooms were reconnected to it by restoring the original full-height doors and louvred shutters. Air moves through the house again the way it always did.

The one new structure is a shaded courtyard pavilion at the rear, timber and tile, built over the old wash area — the modern addition that the family did argue about, and then agreed to.

Casa Salgadas is still recognisably the house the Pereiras have always had. It is simply in agreement with its own climate again.