Blue House

This house can be found in Rua de Marvila, a road that follows the Tagus along a higher level and predates the construction of the Linha da Cintura e do Linha do Norte railways. The project consisted in the expansion of a single-storey home built in 1893 and preserved the existing building. The previous construction was treated as if it were an artefact, respecting its epochal and specific characteristics. The architects expanded on its volume and over a path, punctuated by fruit trees, that accesses a patio. The same conservation strategy was used on the exterior facades, whose elements were kept and incorporated into a new volume. The exterior of the house is painted in Prussian blue and even if this is an artificial colour, it already coloured the prior building’s outside walls. A polished pigmented whitewash slurry made the entire volume uniform, with the addition of black iron oxide at its maximum saturation. The interior colours and the finishes were not decided by the architects but chosen on site by the customers or left to the worker’s discretion.