Casa do Arco.

The site is a sandy clearing two kilometres from the sea, ringed by umbrella pines that the owners refused to lose. We surveyed every trunk before drawing a single wall, and the plan bends in a shallow arc to keep the three oldest trees within arm's reach of the terrace. The arc gave the house its name.

The house sits low, never more than 3.4 metres above the sand: a long white line of render under a thin flat roof. From the track it reads as a garden wall; from the pool, as a frame for the trees.

A terrace of pale limestone runs the full forty-two metres of the house, and the pool runs with it, its curved edge following the arc of the plan. At the deep end the water slips over a stone lip into a hidden channel, so from the living room the surface meets the pines without a coping.

We set out the curve at full scale with string lines on site for a week, moving it ten centimetres at a time until the shade of the oldest pine fell across the pool steps at four in the afternoon.

Living room, dining and kitchen form one 22-metre room behind full-height glazing, its frames recessed into floor and ceiling so the sliding panels disappear into the walls when open. The kitchen runs along the back wall: one oak counter under a row of rattan pendants.

Bedrooms are lined in vertical oak boards and hung with linen sheers that soften the morning light. Outside, the walls are finished in three coats of white lime render; inside and out, a honed limestone floor runs unbroken from the sofa to the water, interrupted only by a bronze strip where the glass slides.

The bedrooms are deliberately compact and face east, so the house wakes early and empties onto the terrace. A shaded outdoor kitchen, a long table under the pines and the pool carry daily life outside from May to October.

A year in, the owners tell us the glass walls were closed on fewer than thirty nights between May and October.