McLean Quinlan has completed a comprehensive renovation of a Portuguese townhouse in Lisbon for a couple and their young children. The project transforms the once sterile and poorly configured property into a cohesive family home designed around well-being.
The building was originally a series of subdivided houses that were combined in the 1990s. Its interior was characterised by incongruous split-level floors and layers of mismatched detailing. Echoing acoustics and a problematic layout called for an approach focused on spatial reorganisation and the introduction of natural materials to create a warm and calm family home.
The townhouse is now divided into a four-bedroom main house and a separate self-contained apartment above for visiting family and friends.
The client, a co-founder of a wellness company, approached McLean Quinlan with an open-ended brief that referenced the natural materiality of the studio’s Jackson Hole project and called for more intentional family spaces. No external changes were to be made to the property’s street-facing facade, confining the major architectural interventions to the interior and garden.
Will Mouland, Associate Architect and Project Lead at McLean Quinlan, said:
‘The house was oversized and disconnected, and we wanted to bring it back to something much softer and more domestic in scale. The project became about carefully shaping moments for family life — spaces to gather, work, play, and unwind. Wellness wasn’t an add-on, but very much the organising principle of the whole house. Natural materials were central to achieving that; there is an inherent calm to timber, stone, and limewash. Subtle references to Portuguese materials helped root the house in its setting without being overly literal.’
Reorganising the house
McLean Quinlan reorganised the house, dividing the open-plan interiors to create cosier zones and a greater sense of differentiation. Key architectural interventions included restructuring the split-level floors, relocating the kitchen to better connect the rear living spaces with the garden, carving out a dedicated wellness floor, and designing the interiors of a gazebo-like pool house in the garden.
Extensive integrated storage was introduced throughout to keep the spaces uncluttered, alongside a natural palette drawing on traditional Portuguese materials, including local tiles and limewashed wall finishes.
A floor dedicated to well-being
The ground floor directly expresses the client’s passion for wellness and meditation. What was previously a single, vast open room has been divided into a series of purposeful zones: a massage room; a dedicated yoga space; a gym softened with curtains and warm lighting to avoid the feel of a conventional fitness space; and a tucked-away wet zone containing a steam shower wrapped in microcement, a custom Douglas fir-clad cold plunge, and an infrared sauna. The sauna is lined in pale hemlock and has a glazed front that allows users to look out onto the garden. A dropped Douglas fir ceiling distinguishes the wet zone from the rest of the floor, lending it a Scandinavian cabin-like quality.
Shutters and blinds were introduced to the street-facing windows to filter light and provide complete privacy, allowing the family to fully inhabit the space without feeling exposed to passers-by. Warm lighting unifies the floor with a calm, amber glow.
Creating a more intimate family level
The first floor serves as the home’s primary entrance and main family level. To address the disconnected, office-like quality of the original layout, McLean Quinlan introduced freestanding walls and timber screens — part solid and part formed from open slats — to divide the vast open plan into a series of distinct zones while allowing light to penetrate deep into the interior.
Limewashed walls and timber flooring continue throughout, maintaining cohesion across the floor, while flush painted doors reduce visual clutter.
Opening the family spaces to the garden
A new kitchen faces directly onto the garden, with a dropped timber ceiling distinguishing it from the adjacent dining and family areas. A concealed door within the joinery connects to a pantry, providing a discreet overflow space. The family room sits at the end of the open-plan space, with corner views over the garden and timber screening providing privacy from the stairs and hallway.
The original uPVC French doors at the rear were replaced with panoramic aluminium doors that fold back entirely, opening the kitchen directly onto the terrace. A new curved deck bridges the gap between the house and the dramatically raised garden beyond. External awnings were added to the south-facing rear elevation to provide solar shading for the living and dining areas and other key family spaces.
A dedicated playroom with extensive storage is located at the front of the house. An enclosed TV snug occupies a separate mezzanine level, while a quiet library and study space is gently partitioned from the main family area by a freestanding wall.
A calm sense of arrival
The original entrance felt busy, with patterns and mouldings competing for attention. McLean Quinlan stripped this back to create a moment of decompression on arriving home. The central staircase was enclosed to form a dedicated entrance hall, with storage for coats and shoes integrated beneath it.
The staircase’s dated glass balustrades were replaced with sections of full- and half-height slatted Douglas fir, introducing warmth while allowing light to filter through. A lowered timber-clad ceiling was also introduced within the stairwell to give the space greater definition overhead.
More intimate private rooms
The second floor contains the family’s bedrooms. McLean Quinlan worked closely with the interior designer, Valeria Cardoso, to divide the oversized rooms into more comfortable, human-scaled spaces. The irregular layout of the principal bedroom was reorganised to create a stronger sense of enclosure and more balanced proportions, while the children’s rooms were similarly adjusted to feel appropriately scaled and secure.
Integrated blinds were added to manage solar gain along the south-facing elevation, with air conditioning discreetly incorporated throughout.
The principal bathroom is finished in the home’s signature matte microcement, giving it a distinct spa-like quality. The remaining bathrooms feature subtly undulating white glazed tiles that catch the light. Laid in a combination of three sizes, they draw inspiration from the traditional tiled facades of Lisbon’s architecture.
Light, materiality and proportion
Throughout Lisbon Townhouse, McLean Quinlan has brought together light, natural materials and carefully considered spatial proportions to create a calm and functional family home. The modulation of open and enclosed spaces allows each part of the house to support daily family life while maintaining a sense of warmth, privacy and cohesion.
