CT37
Context
This apartment is part of a 1914’s corner building, located in the traditional neighborhood of Campo de Ourique, in Lisbon. The building is a late “Pombalino” style construction, with the exterior walls in stone with a mortar clad, and the interior walls in wooden structure. It has a very strong presence at the intersection of the two streets due to its simple but carefully designed façade and a fairly high roof fascia, which hides the presence of the cross-hipped tile roof.
Existing building
The building has a left-right typology, and the apartment we refurbished occupies about two-thirds of the floor area on the top floor. It is a typical apartment of this historical and constructive period, with a long interior corridor that serves several compartments of very similar dimensions facing West. At the end of the hall is the kitchen (facing East) with access to the only existing bathroom. The roof void, with a 2,7m head height at the ridge was not used. Its construction consisted only of poor hardwood flooring, which made the rooftop apartments thermally very uncomfortable.
Concept and program
We proposed to our clients to extend the apartment to the attic, since they would be the only ones that could do it.
After this program transformation we aimed to increase the daylight inside the apartment, since the house only received it during the afternoon.
This strategy took form with the introduction of two roof terraces - one facing the East-South quadrant and the other facing the North-West quadrant.
These terraces, alongside with the skylight of the main staircase of the building, take part in organizing the upper floor space - a multipurpose open-space space and a master suite.
The strategy of creating terraces (subtraction to the geometry of the cover) rather than dormer windows (addition to the roof) was followed so that, from an urban point of view, the presence of our intervention was the least intrusive possible, since these voids aren’t visible from the street.
The reorganization of the space on the lower floor was thought to include a living room with a double height void, well-lit from the two terraces above.
On this floor there is also a bathroom with access from the hallway, as well as the kitchen with adjoining dining area and two bedrooms.
Materials
The material strategy was set to preserve as much as possible the characteristics of the original building, with the existing wooden floor being recovered and the timber walls recovered. On the top floor we assumed a new structure in pine wood, while the existing roof structure was maintained where possible and replaced where necessary. The upper floor finish, in solid wood floor of new pine, dialogs with the floor of the lower floor, one hundred years older, in an old-new dialectic that we wanted to assume.
The kitchen and bathrooms, all brand new, have been coated with microcement, assuming their contemporaneity.
