Casa do Relógio

Revivalism and Abstraction

The project encompasses the plot of a ruined Neo-Manueline mansion—the “Casa do Relógio”—situated on Porto's Atlantic front, proposing two attitudes: the rehabilitation of the pre-existing building; and the architectural completion of the brutal gable of the adjoining building to the south, allowing the recontextualisation of the mansion in its surroundings.

A hotel programme occupies the palatial building, housing the large suite rooms, the bar-restaurant, pantry and kitchen, and support spaces; extending the remaining rooms and common areas to the new “gable building” at the back, trapezoidal in shape—designed to reduce its urban impact when viewed from the sea.

The mansion is rehabilitated in its spaces and structural and ornamental elements typical of this revivalist architecture—facades, main walls, wooden floors, hammer ceilings, pilasters, friezes, cornices, and roofs—while maintaining its original relationship with the surrounding balconies, staircases, and gardens.

In contrast, the design of the “gable building” opts for compositional and material uniformity, creating an abstract and rhythmic “background”. Its three structural facades are in exposed concrete, based on pilasters, parapets, and slender vertical fenestrations. It is in the tension between these two buildings and attitudes—Revivalism and Abstraction—that the future of this architecturally condemned and forgotten past will be played out.