Pombaline Corner Apartment

From corner to the landscape, 250 years of history of a Pombaline building reveal a river once closer and the dominance of a building over the cityscape.

The 180m2 apartment had been successively divided into darker spaces with a single window each, blocking its relation with the outside. The project began by redefining the scale of the rooms and their relationship to one another. The corner was opened to the landscape and to the passage of daylight.

A square corner room of 42m² was recovered, with four windows that now look out again over the Tagus, Rua do Arsenal and Largo do Corpo Santo. Although the distinctive character of Pombaline architecture defines the space, the intervention refuses to be a pastiche. The subtleness of this historical architecture style and the proportions of its elements create this new design.

The curve emerges to define the proportion of the openings and the detailing of their edges. Stone is introduced as a sculptural element — with rhythm and detail, openness and translucency — in the spaces that relate to the water and in the framing of the house's openings. These new openings allow light to enter in depth through all the rooms. We can now feel the light entering cooler in the morning, reflected off the river, and as the day goes by, growing warmer, turning across the two facades. 

We sought that the elements introduced would hold a relationship with what we leave behind as we climb the stairs, with what we see across Lisbon. We reconnected the house to the landscape, to its geography.

Location: Largo do Corpo Santo, Lisboa, Portugal | Area: 180 m2 | Architecture: João Carmo Simões; Colaboration: Maria Prates