The existing apartment, which was inherited by the clients, kept the original design, with a layout characterised by sucupira floors and arch-shaped dark wooden doors and compartmentalized spaces. All these elements translated into a dark space, despite the sizeable existing spans.
The first objective was to eliminate the existing doors and the opening up of spaces, as well as the natural lighting of the spaces. The premises were to create communicating, fluid spaces with a present-day design.
For this purpose, some walls were torn down in order to develop a wider relation between the social areas: hall, kitchen, living room and dining room. The beams resulting from the demolition of these walls were 60cm, and were therefore assumed as part of the design, dictating the height of the spans and of the carpentry. On the other hand, the spans in the living room and in the dining-room were “ripped open” so as to be transformed into balcony windows instead of the hung windows, giving more light to this area and, consequently, to the hall and to the access to the bedrooms.
The house “Cidade da Maia” is located in the corner of Vila Alegre Street and Ferreira de Castro Street, in the city of Maia. The implantation was already defined on the allotment license and that’s determined the backrest to the blind facade of the building on the East side, leaving three facades free to North, South and West side.
The house is arranged over three floors, including one below ground level. In the basement there is a garage, a technical area with storage and a laundry.
Designing a church seems to us to be an ideal instrument in searching for a symbolic, mystical and expressive dimension. As History has taught us, the alliance between art and religion offers mankind unique, magical and exalting moments that enrich life, mind and soul.
The church, as a material construction and human representation of the Divine, plays a very important role in the development of sensibility. For believers and lay people, it is a living sign that conveys a transcendent meaning that makes us look beyond what we see, and take time to feel our lives at a deeper level.
The Pool Pavilion is a unique project in its context, combining a regular shaped volume with an endless pool and a yard filled with scenic paths and different visual frames.
Its fundamental premise was to give a sense of balance and order to a context with turbulent surroundings while keeping a smooth, light and integrated language.
Confrontation with the reality of these ruins was always a confrontation seeped in memories. Memories of a place where the raw matter it is constituted of – the rock, the valley and the mountain – shows evident expression, provoking a game of fine balance between place, matter, light and shadow.
We found light that dripped down the stone walls defining spaces separated only by rows of stacked rock. In each fissure, in each wrinkle, a soft balance between light and shadow.
It is a small apartment, part of the Manor of Quinta da Arriaga, in Oeiras. The original house and its spaces of support, in the western limit of the Municipal Garden of Oeiras, were divided in smaller fractions.
Facing the street level, with a private access, confronts on the back the garden and a small water course. The apartment is divided into minimum spaces, crossed by a central corridor.
The project for the FACOL industrial building started with the rehabilitation of an abandoned and obsolete pavilion, providing it with the proper work conditions for a textile dyeing facility. The second phase of the project consisted in the addition of a new volume to the already existent factory, creating a new building where all the administrative functions would take place.
The new office building was implanted on the south face of the existent volume, detached from it and separated by a vertical garden, which isolates any disturbance noise prevenient from the factory facilities.
The new intervention in Casa de São Lourenço is inseparable from the construction of Pousadas de Portugal network, with Pousada de São Lourenço, opened in 1948 in Serra da Estrela, 1200m high, leaning over the Glacier valley of the river Zêzere. This ambitious plan aimed at promoting the culture and customs of the various regions of Portugal, combining, for this purpose, the work of modern architects with regions’ traditional practices.
Like so many other buildings in Portugal, this has been a ruin for decades.
Located in the nº 27 of square Largo 1º de Dezembro in São Pedro, Sintra, a world heritage village with a mountain full of Palaces, Castle, Convents, and other natural marvels. This small building was completely renovated to accommodate two tourist apartments. Its architectural and landscape surroundings make it perfectly integrated into the historic setting and serene environment of Sintra.
The Box XL Houses is a seven houses development arranged in a diverse way, creating different relationships with the environment. The aim was to achieve a balance between the “constructed” and the “natural”, between the “mass” and the “void” so that these two antagonistic realities would form a peaceful and continuous dialogue, enhancing each other. The idea adopted in the project and the division of the lots was carried out to allow the creation of space between the constructed mass, thus obtaining a visual permeability with the landscape.
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