May/August 2018.
Geoff and I knew from the moment we fell in love with Herdade da Avessada that it was going to be a new type of project for us to contend with and would require a completely different mind-set to ‘doing up an old house’. Herdade da Avessada is a brand-new contemporary house which has never been occupied since it was completed in 2012.
With this in mind we instantly recognised that an Architect was going to be required. Again, contrary to professional advice that all of the best Architects are in Lisbon we wanted one from Evora. Needless to say, our trusted Lawyer (Dr. Fernando Porta) came to the rescue, with a recommendation to meet Nuno Alexandre O’Neill and discuss our ideas. Nuno could not have been more amiable to our ideas but asked for time to bring his own ideas to the table, perfect solution.
After purchasing Herdade da Avessada, Geoff and I took regular walks around our new home, room by room and around the large garden (19 Acres) brainstorming ideas between us. Had strangers been listening to our conversations they would have concluded that we were probably insane, which is odd as the term brainstorming originally referred to a state of temporary insanity. As we each pitched our ideas against each other as though we were competing for a Grand Design game show, the individual plans gradually transformed into a collective of each other’s best bits.
Retiring to Evora 