Villa Lóios

Porto from Back to Front

The Vila Lóios rehabilitation project, for residential and commercial use, encompasses four plots in a historic block of Porto. The project fits into a dense fabric where backyards or interior ventilation spaces are scarce. However, taking advantage of an empty plot (a product of an old demolition), the project sought not only to create a new access to the different neighbouring plots, ventilating their rear areas but also to consolidate the fabric of Rua de Trás.

Unlike many “facadist” works—which associate plots forming a single internal structure and a single materiality—this project reinforces the importance of the party walls between plots, ensuring the identity relationship of the facades with the interiors but also, where possible, the constructive materiality of each pre-existing structure (in stone and wood). The new central building straightforwardly expresses both its contemporaneity and materiality—slabs and balconies in exposed concrete—while still establishing a dialogue with the proportions of the neighbouring openings in lacquered wood frames as a compositional theme of the new facade.

Vila Lóios reminds us of the memory of villas or community courtyards for working-class or bourgeois occupation found in many urban centres. By bringing the city “Back to Front,” this project respects Porto's urban matrix and the historical process of its transformation.