Located in an historic building in the heart of the city of Porto, this project consisted in the transformation of a room into the author’s architecture office. Although small (55 m2), this premium space, in regards of solar exposition and relationship with its urban surroundings, was able to accommodate all the demands and areas inherent to its new role as a contemporary office.
Therefore, the office develops throughout six distinct areas: (1) a working area, (2) a printing area, (3) a meeting area, (4) a storage area, (5) a kitchen and (6) a bathroom, in a set of spaces organized in two groups – work and services – distributed along a corridor that unifies the entirety of the place. This distribution results from the functionality and time of usage of each area, whereby the office was organized in a way that the most ephemeral spaces were located by the door, as opposed to the more permanent working areas which require the most privacy and light.
Due to the specificity of all the different spaces, they were distinctly organized in a way that the support areas were enclosed in a volume attached to the circulation corridor and parallel to the working areas laid out in an open plan. This unity is also strengthened through the usage of a profile of light and bookcase that link the three working areas and promote their interconnectivity and fluidity of circulation.
In order to create a coherent unit between these new elements and the pre-existing ones, the entirety of the space was painted white with the exception of the more concrete looking grey floor that allows for a contrasting element that avoids an excessive homogenization of the space.
This proposal mainly intended to create a space that, although located in an historical building, would answer the modern demands of an office and promote a respectful dialog with its pre-existence.
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