This apartment located in the Graça neighborhood in Lisbon, had a gross area of 60 m2 with 3 bedrooms, 1 kitchen and 1 bathroom. The house dated layout had the kitchen, the living room and bathroom completely segregated from each other, which generated an ineffective use of space and weakened the boundaries between private and social. Beyond this, the living room and the bathroom had excessively small areas for a comfortable occupation.
This project was thus an exercise of space reorganization to consolidate the borderlines of social and private, reducing the demolitions to its minimum. As a result, the living room extends to the smaller adjoining room, therefore creating a more generous space for recreation and meals. As for the kitchen, it is now settled in the center of the house to allow a direct connection with the social space. In order to solve the issue of a very small bathroom, we decided to split it into 2 distinct zones, bath and lavatory, to allow independent and simultaneous uses. In place of the previous kitchen, a closet with an extra bed was designed to respond to the needs for more storage mentioned by our clients, but also to support the access to the bathroom area.
Regarding the materials, we decided to maintain the wooden floor and recover all carpentry and stucco works, extending the house’s atmosphere in time. The last layer of transformation, the color, harmonized the new and the existing materials, providing a new identity to the house.
Team
José Andrade Rocha, Filipe Ferreira
Structure Engineer
Flexibetão lda