Architects: Pedro Pacheco Location: Lisbon, Portugal Project area: 90 sqm Project year: 2011 Photographs: FG + SG – Fernando Guerra, Sergio Guerra
The intervention site is located in Lisbon’s historical centre, on the ground floor of a Pombalinian building. It is a very common type of warehouse in these buildings, characterized by a single space defined by three vaulted areas with stone masonry walls and solid brick domes. Its maximum height is 4,15m and it is 16 meters long, 5,50m wide, having a total area of 102 m2. One of the ceiling tops has direct contact with the street, via two doorways, while the other has contact with a ventilation patio.
The architecture project is meant to remodel the existing space for it to become a restaurant, by keeping and outlining its space and architectonic qualities: to maintain the longitudinal reading of the vaulted space, characterised by the lioz limestone arches and pilasters.
The project options are then born from the need to create an element capable of both separating and connecting the dining room and the kitchen, visually freeing the arches and vaults throughout the space’s total length and introducing in the room light and reflection.
This screen-element is defined by a system of white-lacquered glass panels, aligned with the stone arches’ offset, that circumvent the kitchen’s different work areas and the customer washrooms, restraining access to the service area and defining the restaurant’s new image and environment. The street light becomes twice part of the room atmosphere, as the street’s moving images and reflections are being projected onto the screen. Simultaneously, indirect and suspended LED luminary floods the room with colour and regulates its temperature.
