On Portugal’s Alentejo coast, near Melides, a new residential development called Apaulinha is testing a different model for low-density luxury living: nine houses spread across 12.5 hectares of cork-oak forest, with no two designs repeated.
Designed by Policrónica Studio with architects Julien Labrousse and Ambre Babzoe Marazzi, the domain comprises eight new houses and one original farmhouse, each occupying more than a hectare. Rather than working from a single template, the architects treated every plot’s topography, light, and vegetation as the starting point for an independent design, so no two houses share a floor plan, orientation, or material palette, an approach the architects describe as nine forms of solitude around a shared landscape.
What unites the nine residences is a shared architectural language: natural stone, timber, deep overhangs for shade, cross-ventilation, and openings framed toward a specific view or courtyard rather than maximised for glazing’s sake. It’s an approach closer to the rural architecture of the Alentejo than to the glass-walled villas that dominate international luxury property listings.
Between the houses, a sequence of shared spaces is scattered across the domain rather than concentrated in a single clubhouse: a central lake, a thermal room with a timber sauna and cold-plunge bath, a movement room, a court, a children’s studio, and a night room and bar called The Shelter. None compete with each other; they exist to make encounters between neighbours possible without making them obligatory.
At the centre of the domain, The Common Ground functions as a quiet arrival point: concierge support, a long communal table, a fire in the evening, described by its architects as neither a lobby nor a clubhouse but a shared interior where the life of the domain gathers. A dedicated team also manages rentals and housekeeping, positioning each property somewhere between a private house and a well-run hotel, a service aimed at owners who want a second home without the usual maintenance burden.
The development also includes a restaurant on-site, drawing on the region’s produce and positioned as a gathering point for residents rather than a standalone destination, along with a movement studio and gym oriented toward the surrounding landscape rather than an enclosed facility.
Construction on Apaulinha is scheduled to begin in October 2026, with completion targeted for 2028, and a limited pre-launch release of three of the nine residences is available now by reservation. The project is developed by Apaulinha – Elegant Horizon Lda, a French holding company backed by Groupe Deleuze, with two decades of experience in residential development, hospitality, and architecture across France, Portugal, and Spain. That track record includes the Élysée Montmartre Hotel in Paris, winner of ArchDaily’s 2025 Building of the Year award in the Hospitality Architecture category, and the restoration of the Palácio do Grilo in Lisbon, featured by Designboom and shortlisted for the Prix Versailles.
For buyers weighing a second home in Portugal beyond the Algarve or Lisbon, Apaulinha offers a different proposition: a private domain built around landscape and material restraint rather than density, with the lake, the restaurant, and the rest of the shared amenities designed to make daily life on the domain feel complete without leaving it, and professional rental and upkeep management built in from the start.
