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Local architecture studio Fahr 021.3 has renovated a home for a young family in Porto, Portugal, drawing inspiration from the social architecture projects seen in the city in the 1960s and 70s. More
A spiralling concrete walkway and a storage wall filled with colourful ceramics are the standout features in this office for E-goi and Clavel’s Kitchen, designed by Paulo Merlini Architects.
The three-storey building is the headquarters for two companies: Clavel’s Kitchen, which creates digital content for brands in the food sector, and email marketing provider E-goi.
A spiralling concrete ramp connects the three floorsPaulo Merlini Architects designed the 2,800-square-metre workplace to be functional and flexible, but to also feel playful and creative.
“One of the most important issues in designing a company’s headquarters is to create a space that expresses and is in line with the corporate culture,” said the studio.
“Both E-goi and Clavel’s Kitchen present a rather informal type of management, although extremely professional, and asked us for a space that would express that – a fluid, equal, heterogeneous and unpretentious space.”
A skylight illuminates the walkway from aboveThe building is made of two structures – one preexisting and one new – which join together.
The concrete ramp forms the natural heart of the newly connected interior, providing access between floors while also functioning as a meeting place for staff.
Concrete spiral staircase twists through open-plan office by Hildebrand
Slender vertical bars create a balustrade, while adding to the sculptural appearance of the spiral.
There’s also a skylight above, which allows natural light to filter down through all three floors.
A storage wall is filled with objects used in photoshootsThe colourful storage wall, located on the first floor, provides a striking backdrop to the spiral.
Built from wood and with a backdrop of clear glass, this huge shelving unit is filled with cooking equipment, crockery and tableware, used by Clavel’s Kitchen for photoshoots.
These elements are organised by colour, creating a rainbow effect.
The photography studio benefits from north lightThe photography studio is positioned directly in front of this wall, behind the glazed north-facing facade, so that it can benefit from natural light with minimal shadows.
Paulo Merlini Architects said this is “the best light for the type of function it offers since, reflected by the sky, it offers low-contrast lighting, remaining relatively constant during the day”.
“Wooden boxes” organise the interior layoutOther spaces in the office include a dining room with enough space for 100 people to eat together along with a mix of formal and informal meeting rooms and video-call booths.
These spaces are organised by a series of “wooden boxes”. Some of these are complete volumes that contain entire rooms or booths, while others are made up of partition walls or ceiling surfaces.
Meeting rooms are housed within these wooden volumesOne box incorporates three house-shaped openings, with banquette seating and tables built in, while another features curtains and beanbags.
“It is the distribution of these boxes throughout the space that defines all the spatial dynamics,” said the studio.
Spaces are designed to be flexible and fun”By distributing these functions in a heterogenic way throughout the space, and by mismatching these elements in a kind of organised chaos, we guarantee spatial versatility and create a series of nooks and crannies that allow several kinds of appropriation,” it continued.
“We guarantee ample spaces where the interaction between co-workers takes place with great naturalness, and more discrete spaces where you can read a book, relax, or even have a more informal meeting.”
Photography is by Ivo Tavares.
Project credits
Architect: Paulo Merlini ArchitectsProject team: Paulo Merlini, André Santos
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REDO Architects had stage sets in mind when redesigning the interiors for a pair of houses in the former Puppeteers’ Quarter in Sintra, Portugal.
The two homes, now known as Puppeteers House, are part of a series of buildings that were originally built for a local puppeteer’s family, but had more recently been used as storage for farming tools.
A curved wooden bench creates a window seat on the first-floor landingWith its renovation, Lisbon-based REDO Architects has brought the buildings back into residential use as homes for two of the puppeteer’s great grandchildren.
The revamped buildings are designed to capture the spirit of their heritage, with lightweight wooden joinery constructions that evoke theatrical scenography and circular details that suggest a playful character.
Bathrooms are concealed within the wooden joinery
An all-new interior layout was needed, so this was designed to reinforce the theatrical feel.
Elements like the staircase and first-floor window seat have a stage-like quality, while secondary spaces like bathrooms are concealed within the walls.
The larger house contains a dedicated kitchen and dining space”The relation between the existing external walls and the new interior walls – two different skins – was explored and dramatised throughout the project on different scales,” explained studio founder Diogo Figueiredo.
“This friction generated misalignments, which are expressed in the windows as opaque panels,” he told Dezeen, “and it also created in-between spaces for built-in furniture and bathrooms, like a back-of-stage area.”
The homes sit on opposite sides of a garden courtyardOne of the houses is single-storey, the other is double-storey, and they are located either side of a private courtyard.
The buildings are designed to function as self-contained properties, but they are also very open to one another, with large windows fronting the shared courtyard garden.
The smaller property contains one bedroom on the ground floorThe smaller of the two homes contains a living space with a kitchenette, a separate bedroom and a bathroom.
The other home has a similar layout, with a living room and a separate kitchen and dining space on the ground floor, and two en-suite bedrooms upstairs.
Living spaces feature lioz stone flooringA consistent materials palette features throughout. An ivory-toned regional stone known as lioz was used flooring in the main living spaces and surfaces for the kitchen and bathrooms.
Flooring in the bedrooms is wood, matching the doors, furniture and shelving that feature throughout the two homes.
Fala Atelier renovates house in Porto with candy-coloured accents
Circular details feature throughout the interiors, at a range of scales. Some are full circles, like the porthole window and cabinet handles, while others are large curves, like the window seat or the rounded wall partitions.
“We used a precise quarter of a circle as a tool – like a compass – in different radii, orientations, combinations and materialities,” explained Figueiredo.
The main first-floor bedroom features a corner window”It was explored in different moments of the project: to differentiate and disconnect the new internal layer from the existing walls, to connect different rooms, and to create smooth circulation routes,” he said.
Many of these curves are mirrored in ceiling details directly overhead, which contrast with the linearity of the exposed roof beams.
The second first-floor bedroom features a porthole windowOther recent examples of house renovations in Portugal include House in Fontaínhas, a home with candy-coloured details, and Rural House in Portugal, a house created in an old granite community oven.
Photography is by Do Mal o Menos.
Project credits
Architect: REDO ArchitectsProject team: Diogo Figueiredo, Pedro França Jorge
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Porto architecture practice Merooficina has converted a former fisherman’s house in Aveiro, Portugal, into two apartments that blend original features with new interventions.Casa da Beiramar is located in the historic neighbourhood of Beira-Mar with its colourful terraced houses. These have long, narrow floor plans and an adobe structure, meaning they are built from bricks made of earth and other organic materials.
Above: Casa da Beiramar is situated in Aveiro’s Beira-Mar neighbourhood. Top image: the ground-floor flat now opens up onto a patio
Clad in traditional azulejos tiles and decorated with green ceramic flowerpots, the houses were originally built for the local fishing community.
“This part of the city has been witnessing an interesting fusion between the old dwellers and more recent inhabitants,” explained Merooficina founders Catarina Ribeiro and Vitório Leite.
The downstairs kitchen features yellow tiles and marble countertops
The studio was commissioned by one of these new residents to restore a two-storey, 150-square-metre adobe house, which sits on a corner plot with two street-facing facades.
The client asked Merooficina to create a flexible design that would allow the building to be used in multiple different ways – initially as two apartments but with a longterm view of converting it back into a single house or an office for the owner’s new psychology practice.
The stairwell leading up to the first-floor apartment is painted blue
“We understand flexibility as a way to enrich ageing buildings,” said the studio. “It’s a matter of adding and layering possibilities on a specific place, so the new occupation can be multiple and transformative.”
Using the house’s two existing entrances, the studio was able to create two separate apartments – one on each floor of the building. The first-floor apartment can be reached via a bright blue stairwell, while the ground-floor apartment is accessed directly from the street.
Palma Hideaway in Mallorca is obscured from the street by a tiny tiled garden
A door that connects the two apartments at the bottom of the stairwell has been temporarily closed off but yellow panes of glass help to funnel light into the stairwell.
The studio restored and reinforced the existing adobe walls and floors to improve the apartments’ thermal and acoustic insulation. Original windows, doors and other structural and ornamental elements were retained as much as possible.
A new balcony juts out over the patio
The biggest intervention was the addition of a new steel structure, which allowed the back of the building to be opened up. Here, the previous owners had added a haphazard extension using ceramic bricks and steel sheets, covering what used to be a patio.
This structure was demolished to return the space to its former use, while pivot windows were added to open up the ground floor apartment to the outdoor space.
The patio walls are clad in a gradient of yellow tiles that were painted by a local artist, in a homage to Aveiro’s long history of tile production.
The yellow tiles from the kitchen are matched on the patio
The patio connects to an open-plan living and dining area and a kitchen, which features matching yellow tiles, marble countertops and birch plywood cupboards.
From the kitchen, a mirrored door leads to the bathroom, bedroom and kitchen.
A glazed balcony was added above the new patio on the first floor, which houses a bathroom and a bathtub enrobed in a white curtain to create a barrier between the bather and the busy street.
The bathtub is hidden from view through a white curtain
“We wanted to mix and match the ambiences of both apartments using the tiles and other details, but they are quite different,” Ribeiro told Dezeen.
“In the upstairs apartment, we tried to retain all of the existing features, such as the windows and wood detailing – adding only the glazed balcony in the bathroom and a new kitchen. Downstairs, however, was in a very bad state when we began the project. So here we used a cleaner, more minimal design language and organisation.”
Pinewood flooring runs through the first-floor apartment
In the upstairs kitchen, the architects restored the original tiles, brown rose plaster and marble as well as replacing the pinewood flooring.
Whenever the owners want to convert the property back into a single dwelling, the apartments can easily be connected via the door at the bottom of the stairwell while the kitchen on the first floor could be converted into an additional bedroom.
Yellow glass panes separate the two apartments
Alternatively, the downstairs entrance, bathroom and bedroom could be closed off from the kitchen and living room and turned into an office for the owner’s work as a psychologist.
“The mixture between the new interventions and the existing, recovered features is a liquid blend between two ways of building,” explained the architects. “One more universal – related to the new habits and comfort demands of the new inhabitants – and the other more vernacular, related to the place, the existing building and the local culture.”
In Spain, Iterare Arquitectos used traditional construction techniques and local materials to update a 100-year-old home in a former fisherman’s neighbourhood in Valencia. The minimalist interior is designed to blend in with its historical surroundings.
Photography is by Tiago Casanova.
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A fireman’s pole lets children slide down between floors in this house that Aurora Arquitectos has created in Lisbon, Portugal.The building that the house occupies is nestled along Bartolomeu Dias street, west of central Lisbon.
Although the structure had fallen into a state of almost complete ruin, it was purchased by a couple who wanted to establish a home where they could live for the foreseeable future and raise their three young children.
Aurora Arquitectos was tasked with carrying out the residential conversion.
“This is an upstream project in a time when the city has been gradually emptied from its inhabitants under the pressure of tourism and real estate speculation,” said the practice.
“This is a project of resistance since it grows from the desire of a family wanting to remain in its own neighbourhood.”
The original building was two storeys and measured just 60 square metres.
As Aurora Arquitectos had to reconstruct nearly the entire building, it decided to extend the structure to create three more storeys and an extra 169 square metres of space.
The new portion of the building has been painted bright white.
“The family lived for some years in the Netherlands in a typical townhouse, known as a typology that has a vertical distribution of the program, so we can also say that influenced the design process,” the practice explained to Dezeen.
Aurora Arquitectos opens up 1970s apartment in Lisbon with angular skylights and folding walls
Inside, the traditional arrangement of rooms has been reversed. The sleeping quarters are on the bottom two floors, while the communal living spaces have been spread across the upper three floors to benefit from views of the nearby Tejo river.
This excludes the playroom that has been situated at the rear of the ground floor, complete with curving in-built shelves where the kids can display their toys.
The room can be reached via a fireman’s pole that extends from the kid’s bedroom directly above.
“The family has three children and they like to spend all their time together, so the option was to concentrate their sleeping area,” added practice.
“But once they grow up and need separate bedrooms one can transform the playroom into a bedroom, and the pole area into a bathroom.”
As the playroom faces onto a narrow lane often frequented by pedestrians, the rear elevation of the home has been fitted with oversized privacy shutters that can be slid across the windows.
On the home’s front elevation, the practice has simply restored the existing patterned tiles and freshened up the “Lisbon-green” paint that features on the doors.
Rooms across all levels of the home have timber flooring and white walls, cabinetry and light fixtures. Perforated white metal forms the treads of some of the staircases.
A splash of colour is provided by a recessed window in the kitchen that the practice refers to as “the green eye” as it is lined with jade-coloured Verde Viana marble.
On the fifth floor is an outdoor terrace inset in the house’s pitched roof.
The terrace is backed by a glass wall that looks down to the home’s living room on the fourth floor. Here there is a large window seat where the inhabitants can sit and relax with a book.
Aurora Arquitectos was established in 2010 by Sofia Couto and Sérgio Antunes.
The practice has completed a number of other projects around the Portuguese city of Lisbon – others include a brightly-hued hostel that occupies an old family home, and a renovated 1970s apartment that features angular skylights and folding walls.
Photography is by Do Mal O Menos.
Project credits:
Architecture: Aurora ArquitectosArchitecture team: Sérgio Antunes, Sofia Reis Couto, Carolina Rocha, Bruno Pereira, Tânia Sousa, Rui Baltazar, Dora JerbicBuilding supervision: GesconsultEngineering: Zilva, Global, LDAConstruction: Mestre Avelino
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Atelier Rua has arranged living spaces in this pared-back Portuguese holiday home around an enormous living room, which has three different vistas of its verdant surroundings. Situated south of Lisbon in the small village of Aldeia do Meco, the one-storey concrete house is shared by a retired Dutch couple. The pair were keen to work […] More
Design studio Stu.dere looked into traditional washing methods to create the interior of this laundrette in northern Portugal, which features marble and green-tile surfaces. Located in the municipality of Amarante, Lavandaria Morinha is a laundrette that includes a service area for garment alterations, repairs, dry cleaning and ironing. Although the space has a contemporary, pared-back […] More
Portuguese studio Fala Atelier has used a mint green floor to brighten up the interior of a two-bedroom apartment in Porto. The studio, led by architects Filipe Magalhães, Ana Luisa Soares and Ahmed Belkhodja, was asked to completely redesign the 190-square-property, which is set on the ground floor of a nondescript modernist housing block. The […] More
