To intervene in a generous apartment, designed in 1950 by Cassiano Branco, can be a delicate job. With a generous built area of 310 m2 and innovative built solution for the time, the apartment presents three distinct areas – services, social and private.
Seventy years after its completion and never used as housing, it presents some lack of character and in need of modernization, both in terms of comfort standards as well as adaptation to new desires.
This project consists in the transformation of a small apartment inserted in a XIX century building located at the historical center of Porto. Given the small dimension of the space and the customer’s specifications to increase the useful area, the proposal is based on the design of a mezzanine over the central space, taking advantage of the characteristic high ceilings of this period´s constructions. The intermediate floor created by the mezzanine integrates a main bedroom and an additional bedroom space, both open towards the living room, but also separate and hidden. The lower floor develops into the living, dining room and kitchen. The remaining service spaces like the bathroom and storage are concentrated in the surplus interior area.
The proposal was made for a plot of land with 1697 m², where 112 m² were covered area that corresponded to a demolished two-floor house and attic that had a total floor area of around 300 m². Out of the 1697 m² of land, only 600 m² could be built on, as the rest of the land is part of the Agricultural Reserve.
The land is on a steep west-east slope divided into two terraces with a nine-metre total difference in elevation. The constructive area was isolated from the street and surrounded by the Agricultural Reserve, below street level.
The Coura House project starts from the need to rehabilitate a country house with two centuries of history, abandoned by the heirs who went on to build new houses in the surroundings. This small scale construction, now purchased to become a holiday home, featured two floors and an original functional program consisting of an animal shelter (lower floor) and a dwelling (upper floor).
Our project focused on the restoration of the Heróis de África house, a lot within the old and classified district of Leça da Palmeira, a seaside town close to Porto, in Portugal. Built in the 1930s, its sober architectural language reflects the constructive and stylistic options of the time as visible in the rectilinear design of the cornice and the stone masonry elements flanking the cast iron gate also incorporating a depurated decorative geometry. Having always served as a residence, the house has stone walls finished with traditional mortar and painting, painted wood framing, wooden slabs, pine flooring, and ceramic tiles in the roof. It endured some minor transformations and extensions along its way mainly visible at the old rear façade.
Article source: GALANT I.D. – ARQUITECTURA E DESIGN DE INTERIORES LDA.
The concept of the project is presenting the traditional Portuguese dish “frango assado”, grilled chicken and vegetables menu, in a new way. The restaurant, situated in a modern neighbourhood city of Lisbon, offers takeaway, delivery services also.
In Cercal House time and space are not separate dimensions but rather interdependent.
There is the time that corresponds to the cycles of nature, the time of who inhabits the place and there is the space that is shaped and influenced by it.
Alentejo – the place where the house is located – is also a challenge. As Miguel Torga says, Alentejo represents “the maximum and the minimum we can aspire to: the wilderness of an infinite dream and the reality of an exhausted soil.”1
The Cercal House is thus a proposal that explores the possibilities of a new time and space in a place also marked and altered by the novelty of the house, wishing ultimately to build a renewed commitment between man and landscape.
The history of Longroiva spa is similar to that of most spas in Portugal. The rudimentary medicine that was practised for centuries – consisting of guesswork with shamanistic characteristics – made these thermal water springs one of the most recommended prescriptions.
Longroiva Hotel grew from the need to enhance and obtain a return on the recentlybuilt baths, the result of heavy public investment, which needed a hotel unit to accommodate persons coming to use the spa. It consists of a main building, the restoration of the original late nineteenth century edifice, a terrace of suites on the escarpment and bungalows to the rear. The first sensation we have is of contemplating the typical rows of vines in the Upper Douro, which is the boundary line of Longroiva. The row of rooms set into the escarpment skilfully lightens the weight that construction on a hillside usually imprints on one’s gaze.
The derelict construction was found on an unremarkable neighbourhood, hiding a deep and generous garden; the proud pitched roof distinguished the otherwise trivial architecture.
The Fraião house, located in Braga, is a project set up on two floors in a “V” shape, that was conceived to take advantage of the previledged views over the city. The house lies on a densely populated hillside with unique houses and an excellent sun exposure, providing an extraordinary glimpse into the landscape, composing a mesmerizing image.
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