The clients, a couple with a baby, had recently acquired a ground-floor apartment in a low-income housing building in Alvalade neighbourhood, Lisbon, and wished to transform it according to the life they imagined for their future home. They required that the intervention result in larger rooms, while still allowing the echoes of the former apartment to remain perceptible.

The building dates from the 1940s and was designed for low-income families. In particular, the apartment comprised four rooms—three bedrooms and a study, along with a kitchen, a living and dining room, and one bathroom - all of modest dimensions governed by a principle of optimising the total floor area.

It was agreed with the clients that the apartment would function with only two bedrooms and two bathrooms—and that the remaining area would be concentrated into a single space, capable of accommodating multiple forms of occupation and diverse uses: cooking, eating, resting, socialising with friends, working from home, and serving as a play area for the baby.

In short, the composition was to be based not on fixing permanence, but on continuity.

Drawing and its mechanism of abstraction constructs the proposal through another medium, that is, the traditional support of the sheet of paper is replaced by the physical space of walls, corners, structure, ceiling, floor, and furniture,

When transposed to the scale of the apartment interior, lines, directions, forms, texture and colour, become architecture: column, beams, furniture, material finishes, junctions and joints between walls, ceilings, and floors, as well as openings—windows, shutters, and passage doors.

The nature of drawing also carries with it metamorphosis and movement.

The work station that inhabits the house captures these properties by assuming itself as a transformable construction which, through folding and sliding, develops a sequence of movements capable of altering both its use and the appropriation of the surrounding space.

Throughout the house, the surfaces of materials shape the sensory experience, fostering comfort and a sense of home for its inhabitants.

In summary, drawing asserts itself in a constructive manner: it does not decorate, narrate, or represent; on the contrary, it becomes architecture.

Team:
Client: Miriam e Pedro Marvão
Architecture: Paulo Serôdio Lopes, Teresa Serôdio Lopes e Marta Belém
Engineering: Gonçalo Delca; Pedro Viegas
Photos: Eduardo Montenegro