In Lisbon, it’s impossible to be detached from its topography and landscape. When walking down the hill of São Vicente, Rua Washington is the result of the constraints of a reticular urban mesh in confrontation with an accidental geographic arrival to Santa Apolónia. Towards south, the river appears punctually as voids in the densely built urban landscape, through blocks, steep staircases, and extensive plots, smoothly accommodating itself at each level. It’s in one of these voids, in a tight curve, that inert and expectant emerges the number 46.
Built in the late 1930s, this residential building features a typology that has its noble areas on the front elevation, facing north, and the technical areas on the rear elevation, facing south, spread over five floors, and with one apartment per storey. The existing balconies, in a mixed structural system of steel and brickwork, are linked to the technical areas, and seem to ignore all its contemplative potential of facing a “sea” that would present itself without any visual obstacle, although, they’re enclosed within glass and aluminium canopies, that intended to expand the covered space of the house, but for its sparse capacities and as a result, ends up transforming these spaces in unusable storage areas.
Despite of its original typology being a residential rental building, with typical divisions established by load-bearing masonry and timber structure slabs, there were already obvious and unexpected gestures that the clear intention to break with the current constructive paradigm, with the insertion of reinforced concrete slabs in the service areas (kitchens and bathrooms) and the generous area given to the building’s central staircase, which from an early stage, was an element intended to be preserved.
The intervention sought to enhance the building's relation with the surroundings, in what makes it more particular: the river; in a simple strategy of inverting the typological distribution of the internal spaces, attributing to the rear façade a new, central function in the experience of the apartment. The social areas were integrated into a continuous space, connected to a new and restructured balcony, that projects and occupies the area where once there was a fire escape staircase, and that unravels a promontory facing a scenic view towards the sea. The sanitary facilities occupy the inner areas in the centre of the building, where there once used to be an internal room, creating a new 2 bedroom typology with ensuite bedrooms. On the top floor, the pitched roof generates an attic space that shelters a mezzanine, with an open social area, a bedroom and bathroom.
The pre-existing and preserved elements, like the window frames on the front façade, the structure of the central staircase, the main internal masonry walls and the door types (albeit redesigned) contrast in a subtle way, with newbuilt elements, detached from structural components, such as the stairs leading to the mezzanine, the kitchen island, the surfaces and panels with pivoting doors.
Internally, stone and timber, in their rawest form, were the materials chosen for this intervention, in communion with the golden colour of the metallic elements, as a symbol of the building's connection with the sunny landscape.
On the rear elevation, where there was a greater intervention, new pivoting frames were proposed, to be as light as possible, praising the connection between the internal and external areas.
On the side of the building, the gable awaits, in expectation of a new building that, with a delicate gesture, can enclose the long-built front, constituting the block and the natural promontory, which only those who descend Rua Washington are able to contemplate.
