No. 07 sits on a terrace cut into the slope in 1911 for cork oaks. Three of the oaks remain, the largest about 140 years old. The terrace wall below them is the original dry stone, 2.4 metres high at its tallest.

Duarte bought the plot in 2020 from the grandchildren of the man who cut the terrace. The licence allowed 420 m² of building. We used 412, and put none of it under the canopy of an oak.

One courtyard, one oak

Inês Vaz Arquitectos drew the house as a square around a courtyard ten metres across, with the largest oak at its centre and a stone bench around the trunk. The living room, kitchen, library and two bedrooms are on the ground floor; two more bedrooms are upstairs. The walls are 50 cm thick with lime render, and hold the morning cool into the afternoon in August.

The house was finished in 2025. The oaks were stripped for cork in 2023 and will be again in 2032; the last digit of the year is painted on each trunk, as the law requires.