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A visit to Serralves Villa offers a chance to take a trip back in time: to this unique example of Art Deco architecture, built in the 1930s. With great decorative rigor and quality materials, the Villa benefited from the intervention of leading figures of the time, such as Marques da Silva, Charles Siclis, Jacques Émile Ruhlmann, René Lalique and Edgar Brandt.
Visitors can gain an in-depth understanding of the history of the origins of this Villa, which belonged to Count Carlos Alberto Cabral, including explanation of the architectural and decorative details that create its unique atmosphere.
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With its façade overlooking the Rua de Serralves and the main entrance located in the Avenida Marechal Gomes da Costa, Serralves Villa is a significant example of Art Deco style. The building was designed and constructed on the outskirts of Oporto between the mid 1920s and mid 1940s.
The work was the braindchild of a wealthy industrial magnate from Northern Portugal - Carlos Alberto Cabral, the 2nd Count of Vizela. As a result of his frequent travels throughout Europe he had developed a more refined and modern taste than that dictated by prevailing canons in Portugal.
In 1923, he inherited the Quinta do Lordelo estate in Serralves from his family. Over the ensuing years, through a mixture of land purchases and swaps, he expanded the estate towards the sea and the River Douro, until it attained dimensions similar to those of the present day.
Carlos Alberto Cabral had designed a dwelling for himself and for his future wife, Blanche Daubin, located in the family’s former summer residence: including a new villa, built from scratch on the site of the former house; a new park, around the villa, superimposing itself and occasionally absorbing the landscape of the former garden, and extending to an enclosed rural area, in a naturalist allegory to country life.
The 2nd Count of Vizela inhabited the villa with Blanche Daubin in the mid-1940s. The villa - which looks out over the gardens and is bathed in plentiful natural sunlight, includes refined and inviting spaces for festivities and social gatherings on the ground floor. On the first floor, the bedrooms and other private quarters create an atmosphere of luxury and finesse.
However the Count felt somewhat removed from his social circle while living in the Cilla. Due to financial difficulties, he ultimately sold the property in the early 1950s to Delfim Ferreira, the Count of Riba d´Ave, also a textile industrialist.
The sale agreement involved a key restriction – the property couldn’t be altered or dismembered.
Autorship of the project
There is a certain amount of controversy surrounding authorship of the Villa’s architectural project. We know that the name of the Marquis of Silva - a famous architect in Oporto at the time - was closely linked to the work, throughout its construction period, although the dominant style in most of his leading works is distinct from that of Serralves.
It is also known that the layout plans and elevations by the French architect, Charles Siclis, were very important for the Villa’s overall design. These elements are conserved in the Foundation’s archive and the Villa’s definitive shape can be recognised therein.
The interior decoration was entrusted to the architects and decorators of the House of Ruhlmann, who also suggested adaptations to the exterior design. The Count of Vizela articulated the work between the various intervening parties, and his personal taste, as the person who commissioned the work, left its imprint on the long construction period and successive adaptations to the project.
Eurico Cabral and Mário Cabral, the nephews of the Count of Vizela, recall the decisions taken by their uncle and his attitude in relation to the work:
"The interior was fundamentally designed by Jacques Ruhlman one of the great masters of French furniture design and interior architecture.”
"My uncle had a very special gift... he was the one who brought together many architects, interior decorators and other craftsmen but he always had the last word.”
The implantation of the building observes an approximate Northwest-Southeast orientation in profound articulation with the garden. From the garden which circulates around the Villa from behind, visitors can observe the extensive facade, which looks out over the Rua de Serralves. The main entrance is formed by a semicircular widening of the exterior wall, framed beneath a glass canopy. There is also a side entrance via a patio encased between the main building and the chapel.
From the street, the building has a relatively sober and closed appearance to the exterior. By contrast the facade overlooking the garden includes wide or long rectangular windows that accompany the rhythm of the sober lines of geometry that define the building’s overall form and volumetry.
Viewed as a whole, the Villa is a testimony to art deco style, which came into vogue with the 1925 International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in Paris. In the words of Eurico Cabral, the nephew of the Count of Vizela:
" In 1925 he visited the famous decorative arts exhibition in Paris. There he began to establish contact with various leading French artists, including Jacques Grébér - the landscape architect”
The chapel was given a new exterior covering that ensured that it would be visually integrated within the overall building. The chapel itself dates from the 19th century. One of the family heirs, Mário Cabral, remembered that the owner wanted to preserve the chapel:
"The chapel wasn’t demolished; it was integrated within the overall construction. The part of the building including the chapel was built upon the pre-existing construction. The chapel was inserted within the overall design, but preserved in its original form; as a 19th century chapel. The chapel was used regularly in the local neighbourhood. The locals came to mass here and I think this influenced him and therefore he didn’t want to demolish it. That was a general idea shared between him and all the architects working with him... one of the amusing aspects was the manner in which they made the cross; the cross was essentially designed by Ruhlman...... which is quite amazing.”
The building’s interior is distributed across three floors: a basement floor, which includes the kitchen, pantry and service areas; a ground floor including all the living rooms, dining rooms, atriums and library; and a first-floor which corresponds to the private quarters. Visitors entering the Villa through the main entrance from the street, that is relatively dark, will gain their first impression of the building’s structure and its relationship with the garden, from the impressive two-storey central hall. Looking in front, through the vast exterior window, they will see the central parterre and park. Looking to the right, they will see the vast salon which extends via the window to the lateral parterre.
The Villa’s private quarters can be sensed rather than seen, via the first floor gallery around the central atrium. To the left, with a slight difference of floor levels, there is an elegant dining room that overlooks the garden and a billiards room, on the other side, that looks over the street. Beyond them we see a wrought iron gate designed by Edgar Brandt, which separates this social zone from the Villa’s private quarters on the first floor and also the library and service areas on the ground floor.
The villa’s interior architecture and decoration perhaps makes it the most notable example of Art Deco style in Portugal. This was a comparatively late intervention, in comparison with the majority of Art Deco buildings in Europe - explained by the many visits and contacts made by the owner and also the delays that occurred in construction of the building itself. Indeed the 2nd Count of Vizela first became acquainted with the canons of this style in France, where he lived, and he visited the leading Art deco exhibition held in Paris in 1925. He then invited some of the leading figures from the international artistic panorama of that time to work on the project.
Émile-Jacques Ruhlman designed the dining room, hall, salon, cloakroom and billiard room. Alfred Porteneuve, who worked in the same atelier, endowed Serralves with its charismatic pink colouring. René Lalique designed the large skylight of the main hall’s ceiling, on the first floor.
The Foundation’s current collection of furniture only includes a small part of the Villa’s original furniture, given that many of these items were sold at auctions and thus dispersed, prior to acquisition of the property by the Portuguese State. The main exceptions are: the dining-room furniture (repurchased by the Foundation) and the interior architecture equipment (doors, embedded cupboards, doorknobs, bathroom furniture, etc.). During the restoration process of the Villa, overseen by the architect Álvaro Siza, the latter items were preserved with great care.
Part of the Villa’s furniture was acquired from leading interior decorators of the period. Several items were brought from the Count’s residence in Biarritz. He also added antiques, which he inherited from the family, thus creating an overall eclectic style.
Ruhlmann and Leleu design several items of furniture and Silva Bruhns designed the carpets. Edgar Brandt designed a wrought iron gate of the hall and several wall lamps. Jean Perzel designed the lamps. Other refined aspects of the Villa’s interior decoration include the blue limestone and exotic hardwood floors; the marble-lined bathrooms, with stone-carved bathtubs; the geometric patterns of the plasterwork; and the curved form of the library staircase.
Located in one of the highest points of the property, the Villa presides majestically over the Park, which opens out in front of it and either side. From its implantation site, it traces a long longitudinal axis - which extends to the pool at the other end of the property. In front of the villa, the central parterre establishes an element of continuity between the building’s geometric lines and the sobriety of its overall design.
A second, shorter axis – marked by the long Liquid Amber Alley - is designed at a right angle to the central axis defined by the Central Parterre. The alley leads into an octagonal clearing which faces the street and the main entrance to the property. Looking back one can imagine the visitor’s trajectory, from the street towards the building.
On the western side of the building, the large door/window of the ground floor salon opens onto the lateral parterre, suggesting continuity between the interior and exterior spaces.
Through the huge windows, the garden is an omnipresent feature of the villa on the ground floor, while the first floor windows offer panoramic views over the park, enabling a better understanding of the spaces and their inter-relations.
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