Photo by Gaelle Le Boulicant for Elle Decor

About an hour south of Lisbon is a quiet fishing villiage called Comporta where miles of sandy beaches are surrounded by acres of pine forests and the dunes of a nearby natural reserve of the Sado estuary.  A Portuguese businessman Joao Miguel Rodriguez  bought two adjacent fisherman's cottages on this coastal town and hired a cutting edge architect, Manuel Aires Mateus and his brother Francisco to transform the weekend getaway.  The architects made the radical decision to keep the cottages as they were (the thatched roofs, straw walls and sand floors) however made the structures fully modernized.  A state-of-the-art subfloor warms up the sand and keeps it toasty during the cooler months (wouldn't that be an amazing floor): and updated all the windows, wiring and plumbing.  The result is a high-tech compound (they also built two free-standing guest cottages on the property) that was also recreated for the 2010 Architecture Bienele in Venice. The compound is available to rent as a boutique-style property with four thatched huts done up in minimalist décor.  Elle Decor is featuring it in their Jan/Feb '12 issue.  We've found some great images on their website as well that are worth a look.  Check out  CasasNaAreia here!