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Architects: João Paulo Loureiro, arquitecto
- Area: 247 m²
- Year: 2019
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Photographs:Jérémy Pernet
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Manufacturers: Carpintaria Pinto & Lourenço, Reabilitação, Lda., Mínima, Caixilharia de Ferro, Lda., TEV2, Valadares
Text description provided by the architects. To reconstruct and expand a XIXth century building, in the center of the city of Oporto, which was in a state of ruin, managing to rescue the main front, still in a reasonable state of conservation, was the purpose of this project. We have tried to reintroduce a residence program, that, nonetheless, could present itself more attractive for a younger population, namely national or foreign students, young couples, or tourists.
To restore a building represents, after all, a new project, allowing to develop of a methodological process defined by the restoration of a façade, which language is dominant in the city and whose system has demonstrated a great capacity for adaptation to various functional programs that, nowadays, are being implanted in the city. The posterior façade in ruins allowed the introduction of another language, adopting the use of painted metallic panels, giving continuity to a mixed structure of steel and concrete, which solved the structural problems of the body to restore in a more economical way.
This building’s adaptation integrated, apart from the residence program on the top floors, a space for a small restaurant or café, at the street level, defined by an open space connecting the building’s both façades, promoting an image of greater visual permeability between the street and the backyard. This way, the direct sunlight becomes visible at the street level.
The connection between the existing construction and a new autonomous constructive system developed from the interior of the building to its exterior, formatting the spaces and articulating the whole in its shape and functioning, as an interior armor, an urban “pacemaker”, articulating the memory with the new transforming reality, naturally expressing its language and functional morphology. The four apartments program, defined by small studios characterized by the location and fusion into one single volume, the kitchen, the sanitary and closets, built with lighter materials, such as the MFD, natural wood, and stainless steel, distributed in the two faces of the building, forming, on the top floor, small sleeping balconies, using the space resulting from the classical attic shape with the difference that, now, the roof is made of concrete.
