Nestled on one of the green slopes of Pico Island that end in cliffs, in the Azores archipelago, the basalt walls of this ruin had for several decades been exposed to natural inclemencies. On the site had stood a house built at the end of the 18th century. Though it faced the Atlantic Ocean head on, or perhaps because it did, it found protection in the shelter and privacy conferred by thick walls with few small openings. This background was the starting point of the project for the E/C House, which takes the ruin as a mold, engages in a dialogue with its past, and appropriates the beauty of the enclave for itself. The design thus emerges from the subtle movement that takes place between a bordering line, erected with stone and concrete, and the new volumes held back by it, which nevertheless freely overflow here and there, in response to spatial needs and views. The areas of the house are organized in an ascent, in accordance with degrees of privacy required: the ground floor, protected by the first preexisting layer of walls and by new ones, contains the bedrooms; the second story, which the ruins sometimes do not reach and where there is a greater degree of opening to the horizon, accommodates the communal zones; and finally the roof, distributing its inclined surfaces over the ruins to make a home, levitates over the house in the manner of an observation deck towards the sea.