Modern Country Outside Lisbon

Ninety minutes east of Lisbon, amid the knotted olive trees and historic farmhouses of Portugal’s Alentejo region, sits the defiantly modernist Villa Extramuros. A Tetris-like assemblage of stone, glass and whitewashed concrete, the five-room bed-and-breakfast, which opened in 2012, was designed by Lisbon-based architect Jordi Fornells and eclectically decorated (Saarinen Tulip chairs, striped wool rugs from nearby Monsaraz) by its owners, François Savatier and Jean-Christophe Lalanne, a French couple. Now, they’ve teamed up with Fornells again to add a pair of free-standing cottages, just down the path (and past the infinity pool) from the main building. The facades of the new structures — perfect cubes of 500 square feet — are covered with local cork, and their interiors have been outfitted in a style Savatier calls “écologique-pop,” with ’70s-era brass lamps, handmade Artevida wall tiles, spindly-legged stools by Jasper Morrison and geometric prints by Aurélie Nemours. Here, after a breakfast including fresh figs and pasteis de nata delivered right to their door, guests might venture out to the nearby city of Évora, home to a 13th-century Gothic cathedral and the remnants of a Roman temple. Those returning to the compound in the evening need not worry about getting lost in the groves — each bungalow has a rectangular neon light affixed to it, one red and the other a gleaming yellow.

From “Modern Country” by Gisela Williams for New York Times Style Magazine; Photo by Nicolas Matheus

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