Blue House
The project rehabilitates and expands a three-front mansion on Rua Álvares Cabral, completing a continuous succession of neighbouring buildings with two floors and a set-back attic.
The first gesture aimed to increase its volume on the street front to fill the neighbouring gable. The new volumes resume the rhythm and proportion of the pre-existing openings and other roof finishing elements.
The second gesture contemplated the division of its interior space, transforming this single-family typology into a multi-family complex of five apartments without destroying the most significant structural and ornamental elements: main walls in stone masonry, wooden floors and staircases, partitions and stucco ornaments, exterior blue beveled tile cladding.
The partitioning of the new apartments strategically uses the mansion’s staircase as a common distribution element, associating it with an elevator concealed in the new structure. Avoiding excessive internal compartmentalisation, four of these apartments are duplexes, taking advantage of old service stairs or new vertical accesses created in special niches. Similarly, the basement floor is included in the complex, taking advantage of the existing openings and the implementation of an English courtyard on the south front of the garden.
This project demonstrates the spatial versatility of Porto’s bourgeois mansions and their ability to adapt to new forms of life and neighbourhood.
- Team
- Pedra Líquida
- Client
- Private
- Year
- 2023