Armazém Luxury Housing

Around a Courtyard

This project rehabilitates a 19th-century warehouse located at a corner of Largo de São Domingos in Porto's Historic Centre. The pre-existing building was confined between party walls, and the rear facade overlooked a small ventilation courtyard.

The insertion of this Local Accommodation (comprising 9 rooms) sought to maintain the typological-morphological relationships of this valuable and compact urban fabric. Thus, the main facade and the granite party walls were preserved, establishing occasional volumetric concordances with the adjacent buildings. The courtyard was transformed into an elongated patio, benefiting the internal dependencies. The changes in language on the main facade stabilised its framing in Largo de São Domingos, while the new rear facade took advantage of the view over the Morro da Sé in Porto.

Internally, the depth of the building was enhanced, differentiating the “container space” (the party walls to be maintained) from the “contained spaces” (the various rooms, support areas, and vertical circulations). These resulted from concrete and iron structures combined with wood, often recycling elements from the pre-existing building. The materials were chosen to highlight the "plain" identity of the old warehouse, to which the new "skin" of the patio was added, generated by the "brutalist" rhythm of various concrete beams in dialogue with the earthy character of the surrounding granite walls.