Apartment in the Lisbon Stone Block

A corner building is always a challenge for an architect, like the one that designed this unique stone (coated) block, in Avenidas Novas. The mutant façade, a “stone skin”, gets to have various expressions through the mobility that characterizes it, especially by means of the tall and narrow shutters made of marble slabs, which configure how much light gets through. During the night, this block with 20 dwellings irradiates light from the apartments and, during the day, is a skin perforated with vertical rips, when the light from the outside crosses the shutters of variable position. The building can appear both in its monolithic and solid expression and in its pervious version, allowing for an interactive relationship between the residential interior areas and the urban exterior of the avenue. Each dwelling is constituted by a central living room that articulates and gives continuity to the kitchen, where the presence of movable panels allows for different spatialities. It is possible to see a contemporary search for new ways of inhabiting in the articulation of its social and intimate aspects, exploring new solutions that enable different appropriations of the interior space.