House in Alfama

Located next to the National Pantheon, this residence is part of a small square that allows for a peculiar breather in the steep topography descending towards the river. This intervention rehabilitates a building of the medieval matrix, a rare example in the ensemble of buildings constructed after the 1755 earthquake. Having gone through various modifications and extensions, this small edifice reached our day very deformed and degraded. With this more recent intervention, the intention was to take up essential aspects of the construction, enhancing its intrinsic character. For this, the pre-existing patios were used to organize the spaces, resulting in four exterior rooms interspersed with narrow places of shelter. This built ensemble suggests the idea of ruin by means of the roofless character of the house, in relation to the urban environment it belongs to. Its interior spaces allude to a rationale of moderation, taking into consideration the nature and parsimony with which they are designed as inhabitable cells. Going through the various spaces allows for an experience of pleasure and surprise, given the way one explores the patios as exterior rooms, devoid of an immediate role. One of these exterior rooms is flooded by water, thus closing a cycle that, in the labyrinth of connections, the architect intends to perpetuate.