Year 2019-2023 Location Estoril Area 1160m2 Client Private

The site is located in one of the hills of Monte Estoril, a coastal village that became in the 19th Century, a summer holiday cluster for Portuguese and European aristocracy. This created an eclectic building landscape, with luxurious chalets and traditional Portuguese houses, influenced by the neo-romantic architecture of the 19th century.

The new residential building accommodates 3 apartments and sits on a podium embedded in the sloped topography of the site. A sinuous ramp connects the street level to the building. The monolithic volume is entirely covered in render. The irregularities of the textured, hand-applied finish, contrast with the sharpness of the steel elements, such as window frames and balustrades. The project echoes elements of its architectural context. The 4 pitched roof building facades are wrapped with arches, displayed to create a rhythmic repetition. These are at times windows, loggias, or simply subtle recesses in the render.

The outdoor space offers different typologies, carved patios in the podium, deep loggias, and terraces with pools that merge into the landscape. Internally, the apartments are similar in their space organization. The living areas face southwest, being this the most open and permeable elevation, with panoramic views to the sea and surrounding landscape, whereas bedrooms have a more intimist atmosphere. The top-floor apartment encapsulates the attic space, through a double high ceiling space. The roof, covered in glazed white tiles is carved with 3 small patios.

Year 2019-2023 Location Lisbon Area 685m2 Client Student Ville

The existing building is located in a low-density part of the city that remains almost untouched despite its urban surroundings (Eixo Norte-Sul, one of the most polluting roads of Lisbon, is right next to the site), and shows a generally decayed state. Overall, the building’s envelope is left untouched except for a proposed basement level so that the new program, comprised of student accommodations, can be developed inside.

There are two types of studios: one is developed on two levels (basement and ground floor) connected by a metal staircase; while the other is developed on the first floor and has a regular layout of contemporary student residences.

Year 2018-2023 Location Cascais Area 850m2 Client VerdeOeste

In a historical block near Cascais Bay, a 2-storey house with an internal garden will have its interiors adapted to a new program while the street facade and the building’s volume gross are left unchanged. The layout consists of four apartments, all of which have access to independent terraces on the back of the building that also lead the inhabitants to the common garden and pool area. There’s an attic appropriation for the two apartments located on the first floor and a garage is placed at the basement level.

While there are new internal partitions as a consequence of the apartment layout, the majority of preexisting elements such as stonework, wood frames, stucco decoration, and tiles are either repaired or replaced with similar pieces. In a sense, the overall refurbishment strategy tries to merge two different entities (conservative and modernist) with a conciliatory approach.

Year 2022 Location Lisbon Area 117m2 Client Biocol Labs

Biocol Labs is a post-chemical pharmacy, founded in 1977 in Lisbon, with the mission of making chemicals redundant through nature and science. The chosen site to host their first flagship store in Lisbon was the ground floor a historical building near the iconic Praça das Flores. The space was a grocery at the beginning of the century, transformed later into different retail spaces that gradually omitted with layers of interventions the true character of this space.

The project aimed to bring the space to its bones: the masonry walls and brick arches, the structural timber ceiling, and the patched tiled floor. The old counter was covered with stone and the built-in shelves and cupboards were retained. The concept of the new store was to define a space where the colorful packages could take the central stage within a raw and neutral background. To achieve this, walls and timber ceilings were whitewashed, and a white curtain was installed behind the structural brick arch. These created a textured and muted backdrop to the displayed elements. Along with the commercial front space, a small office space was created behind the curtain, with work and break-out areas.

Year 2021 Location Venda do Duque Area 170m2

The project is located in Venda do Duque, Alentejo, next to a deactivated train station. The site is remote and surrounded by cork oak and olive trees, typical of the Alentejo’s landscape. The space was previously a small house and a bakery. The two buildings were connected and edited with careful demolitions and strategic additions, with most of the walls retained, as well as the ceilings, vaulted or sloped in timber.

The project celebrates the vernacular architecture found in the pre-existent structure and aims to preserve the memory and character of the space. Retention was the prime strategy. The material palette was the one found – white washed walls, timber, stone and tiles. Local craftsmen used traditional methods to renovate the house, and the majority of the materials were Portuguese.

Year 2022 Location Comporta Area 145m2

When referring to a work of art, the expression could evoke that process of osmosis between matter and the artist’s body in order to shape an abstract concept— which always implies contrast- but could also suggest that complex mechanism that the work arouses in the viewer relating to it. The aesthetic complacency toward captivating images is counterbalanced by layered meanings, struggles, attempts, personal experiences lying below their catchy surface. (…)

Besides the tension conveyed by the idea of “cute aggression”, the expression I Could Eat You fans out into a series of cross-references, ranging from sexual attraction to exaggerated agonism and personal competition; from the idea of fast consumption to the pleasures of eating. These themes will unfold in the works gathered in the exhibition, that will be served in an original architectural display evoking the typical tablecloths found in Portuguese Tascas.

Text: Sara de Chiara / Venue: Casa da Cultura, Comporta / Art galleries: Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel, Madragoa, Clearing

Year 2021 Location Basel Area 40m2 Client Juan Araujo

Art Basel Unlimited

Drawing on the Fondation Beyeler in Basel as its inspiration, the installation ‘The Hunter’s Dream’ explores the relationship between Renzo Piano’s architecture and Ernst Beyeler’s collection of indigenous African art. The paintings and projections were housed in a bespoke pavilion designed to invoke the museum. A light metal structure was wrapped in transparent fabric creating a distinct and intimate ambient, sheltered from the gigantic hangar where the art fair takes place. The project celebrates the synergy between architecture and art and was supported by the artist galleries: Galeria Cristina Guerra, Stephen Friedman Gallery, Galeria Luisa Strina, and Galleria Continua.

Year 2020 Location Lisbon Area 600m2 Client Gabriel Abrantes

“Programmed Melancholy” was an exhibition by Gabriel Abrantes that combined 5 films (made between 2008 and 2019) and a series of paintings, drawings, and sculptures. Through a series of rooms, the articulation between the two formats was done according to the themes and visual universes proposed by the artist. On the ground floor, plaster walls serve as simple partitions alongside different types of curtains, which were used not only in the form of an opening between rooms but also as a recurrent theme, a ‘grand drape’ that sets the passage from one visual universe to another.

Virtual tour of the exhibition: https://bit.ly/2LXY0dB

Year 2021 Location Lisbon Area 465m2 Client Pedro Reyes

“Sanatorium”, an exhibition by Mexican artist Pedro Reyes, created in 2011 and since presented in different contexts and venues, focuses on mental health, psychological well-being, and its problems within daily life in today’s dense urban centers. The adaptation for MAAT was made during the Covid-19 pandemic and the key goal was to oppose the inevitable digital connection that had been created between museums and the public.

Visitors first had to register to become a ‘patient’ and then begin the walk-through in several exhibition rooms with different therapies that were conducted within a playful dimension. The registration was done at the entry corridor and, for that, two identical structures were created in which a glass partition creates a division in the encounter between the visitor and the therapist – alluding to the patient-doctor relation while also complying with the social distancing rules.

Year 2019 Location Lisbon Area 105m2 Client Private

Given the preexisting layout’s simple partition, the refurbishment had direct premises: to maximize the living and dining area, to add an office/reading area, and to create more storage for the two bedrooms. To have a clear space, a bathroom was removed and gave place to the office while the wall that separated the kitchen from the living room was demolished. The existing corridor was enlarged and a lengthy bookcase is now the main protagonist in the course from the living space to the bedroom area. Wood (riga), marble (Portuguese ‘tiger skin’), and white stucco were the chosen materials that provided a clear scheme throughout the apartment.

Year 2019-2020 Location Lisbon Area 460m2

Located on the east side of Lisbon, Marvila was one of the first industrialized areas of the city. After a period of deindustrialization and decay, this neighborhood is now being regenerated with new mixed-use buildings, art galleries, and parks. Between the river and the train line, this plot is an example of this regeneration. What was before an enclosed quarter fully occupied by warehouses and small industries will be transformed into a new urban block, permeable to the surrounding streets, opening its inner square to the public. At the ground level, the new buildings will be occupied with commercial use and the upper floors will be residential, offering typologies from 2 to 5-bedroom apartments.

Year 2020-… Location Portimão Area 2460m2 Client A Pausa B&B

A family property in Alvor is considered for a new tourist complex, taking advantage of the 2-acre land which includes a tennis court and a swimming pool. The 2-storey main house built in the 1960s (already functioning today as a B&B facility) and a couple of existing buildings will have internal renovations with a low impact in its partitions, while the new scheme is comprised of 9 small-scale villas, a multipurpose pavilion, and a swimming pool. As the main house is located near the central street, the villas are to be set near a secondary road at the other end of the site, thus leaving the pavilion, the garden, and a series of paths as a common space for the visitors.

The villas are placed in a square-shaped envelope and their types differ in scale (one-floor or one-floor with a mezzanine) and also in the parceling of external spaces (one courtyard or two courtyards), two formal features of the vernacular architecture in certain regions of the Algarve.