Rundown garret becomes a tiny penthouse perching over Lisbon

Lisbon is buzzing it's the same that's happening in London same has happened in New York you feel like the city's growing is becoming a bit more desirable and therefore people move in so there's a lot of people investing so you lost already a lot of good amount of properties I was trying to find a property that I liked and I could afford it you're at the top it's last one this was a small apartment after over 30 things of properties it came as a possibility and the fact is that in one of the trips that I came here I was having a drink with a friend of mine and and I told my friend okay well I'm gonna just see this one I've tried so many times you find a good property there's nothing really interesting so let's give it a go obviously it wasn't like this it was really derelict there was a lot of things that were run down a lot of problems within the the apartment they were so damaged there was a bit risky but you know I just thought why not give it a try and and working on it so and obviously we've discovered that was a left some leftover of a terrace that was in the past so we uncovered the neighbors downstairs had these huge problem with leaks and literally that the whole thing was falling into their apartment so we fixed it so the idea was that because we found these terrorists while we were doing the works we wanted to in a way celebrate so the idea was to bring in the idea of the terrorists from the outside to the inside and we use this sort of offcuts which are traditional from terraces in the Mediterranean and we brought them in these are leftovers of marble which are all of them from Portugal from the region of Alentejo they are from the family of streamers with different colors ranging from the pink to brown to blue to almost black and on the outside is a little bit more random and rustic inside we use this more it's like a random order so the colours are placed evenly and if you see in the bathroom it carries on into there and here you start having the the more bluish color all the way to the shower and in office there were offcuts from probably another job so they all came in this size we just chopped them with the same width so this was using these leftovers bringing the the nicest pieces and then transforming them break them and bringing them into smaller pieces kind of creating almost a catalogue of of families right and then applying them but the idea was to always capture the existing features the historical features that makes the apartment unique there were already windows here not with this shape but they were windows here this is how I found the apartment and this is the view exactly like here wait so there was a wall here which was really damaged as well this was the bathroom in there and we just tried to bring back the same consistency from the window at the front the actual outline of the arch is exactly the same as the one is you can see under the front room we created the exact same window as it was before but now better insulated with double glazing as you can see here and the idea was we wanted to celebrate this sort of Mediterranean feel we have such great legacy on not just aesthetically but in terms of construction to use materials that are warm and that make you feel good the modern world of Assad in European countries it feels like it detached from its own essence so we need to bring back that essence of warmth the concept is to enhance the existing features and by doing that we try to mute everything else so these features kind of stand out so we use this natural clay render it's not paint is a render that is applied throughout and it has a thickness of between one to three millimeters so there's no need to paint and also this has some very interesting properties in terms of humidity it breeds back those days the walls were breathing properly because they were stone and sand and lime so when we open up the ceiling literally pigeons that were living here there were dead pigeons they were like loads of dusts feathers all of it so this wood has this texture because was it's been eaten off by the bugs but we're lucky enough to find that the bugs were not here anymore so we just treated it and we kept it as is we just left a sort of whitewash yeah because the concept of this apartment is by focusing on the existing features we mute the background the kitchen again the idea was to mute did you use the same color but we got inspired in this chimney breast which is existing from the side and as you can see has some texture in it so the idea was to bring that texture into cupboards and then here on this wall and that wall and also in the bathroom we used natural product it's a clay paste but it's waterproofed I've worked with it's very different and difficult floor plans but this one is especially difficult because it's very awkward as you can see this wall doesn't line up with this one none of the walls line up with any wall so we had to kind of step back certain things and step up some other parts of the of these walls to create some sort of geometry so it doesn't look arbitrary it doesn't look wrong so we actually lost some space to try to get this neat for instance here this wall was starting from here all the way there so he had to lose this place to make it perpendicular to the other to the other walls this wall was also falling into this side so we had to adjust the wall put a new a new door here this is existing and this is a very typical structure from this sort of buildings so the idea was to expose whenever possible this kind of charming existing features not too much so it's not overwhelming but just enough to be unique like for instance this ceiling as you can see this is existing and we didn't do anything to it apart from fixing a little bit in painting this is called skirt and shirt in Portuguese because it kind of ties in between these different timbres this gets in between these so they they they look it's like a locking system it's like you put this the shirt on your skirt I think it's something like that it's like not too sure they were done originally like handmade they were not done industrially so the idea here was again to use this materiality throughout like in the living room in the rest of the house so this is the waterproof material and then we wanted to delete a lot of the mess that you normally see in bathrooms of water types and things and generally the toilet flushes are really ugly so we try to do something practical so we have these buttons that are built in the wall and this is the access panel which we created sort of a little shelf the idea of the shower door is just to be as minimal as possible because we don't want to kill the the view of the shower area and not to lose a sense of a unity within the bathroom these windows are typical from buildings that cannot open windows towards the other buildings because we couldn't increase it at least let's make it part of the design so we just creating a new steel in glass and then we use the same sort of idea of the flooring into this little shelf this as part of the frescoes that we found the place was full of 1819 dated frescoes and we uncovered them one by one so that was just a surprise yes even though when I saw that the first time the building I noticed there was a little chip on the wall and I could see there's something in it so I didn't really tell the the real-estate agent that I saw it after that it was a discovery layers and layers and layers of paint and wallpaper and other sticker these detail is because the room was a speaker but we split into a walk-in closet and bathroom so the idea was to break that junction by mirroring them this is the only world that we actually created in the house because this was a whole open space here and we wanted to provide two bedrooms again we started taking these two coats to go out and we found out found these frescoes as you can see they're damaged because two applies to throw on it people would have to chip them so here to create adherence to it so we didn't restore them per se we just kept them as we found is this a way to sort of integrate like the memory yeah so obviously as you can see they're damaged and it was also be overwhelming so we tried to retain a memory of it but not to be overwhelming so for instance in this case you can see these two different frescoes behind this one you'll find another one like that so this is more recent but it was also done in the same way which is quite beautiful so I tried to retain this one as a memory of layers of different users of the space throughout history it's 200 years old this building so it's that post permit gives the bombard renovation of the city so the the buildings from 1819 the earthquake in Lisbon was 1755 so there was an earthquake a fire and tsunami all in the same time and it was generated by the earthquake so the idea that Merkel had was or his kingdom was to create a structural system to build stronger buildings that will be better prepared for future earthquakes this system is a very typical family no system which is called the Caged system the wood is a very sturdy wood that was infilled generally with the leftovers of the earthquake you know you can imagine there was so much everywhere they wouldn't have trucks to to send them away so they just packed them up put it on your wall again yeah so the idea here was again this is a room that was split into bathroom and walk-in closet see the idea was to unveil these frescoes and then to create this mirrored wall which in a way expands the room because the room is small and also mirrors the frescoes so when you're in the room you actually see the reflection of them of the frescoes there are on the other walls and then up here we needed some natural light so we just created these glass tiles to create this niche of light so this is the same situation we've got a window there that is facing the stairwell and the stairwell of the building has a skylight so in the morning the Sun hits a skylight and gets through the window into here so the idea was not to lose that so we created a subtle moment where the natural light kit gets in and at night we create these artificial lighting to create some atmosphere very often you don't need a lot of light to create that atmosphere this is the other room because it's so small we wanted to provide a double bed but a room is tiny so we designed this bed which allows you to go to the balcony through this platform and when you want to sleep you just lift it up and you have a double bed because it's a fifth floor without a lift with small openings everything was hot we'd have to be built in here so this is made of seven parts which are assembled on-site you just walk over like this so you can go to the balcony and when you want to sleep you just lift it up and that's it no I mean the idea was I spent a lot of time thinking how am I going to put a double bed here some techniques are the ones that you lift the bed and it kind of rotates towards the wall but that would be really awkward because you most of the time you're going to sleep you're not going to do anything in a space that suddenly it becomes a bed so the idea was to keep the bed using honest materials but providing the access to to the balcony so this is the last floor that we are in the roof pretty much so in this case there was not much that you could do with this room apparently the previous owners used to sleep here so the idea here is that you would just create a space to do so put some storage and maybe create a more intimate room for TV or reading or something like that so we we also made this opening here providing natural light and suddenly we can have a little garden yeah certain plants previously our owner used to sleep in here I think he's just she felt like it was warmer probably here the idea was being able to create decent dimensions for the room but not breaking the fact that you have this window at least door here so this was just to create a small hallway to the room that's correct yeah yeah this is the only world that we created so something else about also the arches which were not planned but there's a relationship between these arched deep arched wall and the former convent which is over there and you can see that tower there which also has these deep windows we have these these things here it's because we've got obviously in the summer this gets crazy so this is just a way to close off the space and make it a little bit more summer friendly so what we do even always trying to create a balance between geometry and organic shapes and vibes to it because we are also not all geometric or all super organic there's always like this relationship between something that is super straight and a bit more fluid these windows they were done in a way that you can open them up and they have a stopper obviously for security reasons but if you're willing to just sit down and read a book you can just open up and just sit there and just enjoy enjoy the view and enjoy the the breeze this is meant to be social so if you're if you wanna sit on the floor on that ledge between the terrace and and the living it's kind of to foster that same thing here you can be here and talking with friends and you can just be sitting here and smoking or something the pontiff in things have real that bridge over there and the Golden Gate had the same engineer was designed by that the same engineer and it's it's actually funny that priests okay which is that statue over there that big statue is also related to the statue in Rio so we've got to let's say icons within the same view that are relatable to the Americas at the end of the river in the beginning of the sea that faces the Americas because this is most place I wanted to make sure that you can host more than four people so I designed this table that it's three tables in one like the ones you have in coffee shops that you stack them up so it's a very simple idea so when you want to take them off you just take these sort of little bits and then you just lift it up and remove them and you just put side by side so it's a very simple table but allows you to have more than four people at least ten people I believe that good design doesn't have to be expensive it's just a way of choosing where to spend the money wisely I'm not interested in spending a lot of money in expensive door handles if you can ask the local craftsmen to do like these in metal and then lacquer them and that's it obviously there is more time spent on the design of each thing thinking a bit more about the lighting but you can reach to a beautiful outcome we are having to spend a lot of money ah you

Channel: Kirsten Dirksen

Views: 590,466

Keywords: Lisbon flat, tiny flat, small apartment, narrow apartment, narrow flat, Pombalino, Lisbon, Mediterranean style, Mediterranean architecture, traditional building, artisanal craftmanship, frescos, daylighting, indoor outdoor apartment, Lapa, Joao Gameiro, Studio Gameiro, skinny flat, skinny home

Id: 79L0hLx6eB0

Length: 18min 56sec (1136 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 27 2019