House in Mouraria

This house in the historic neighbourhood of Mouraria, Lisbon, suffered many transformations over the years that compartmentalised the space. The relation with the street was underexplored and the connections between social and private areas were ambiguous. The intervention aimed to open the social area to the street, uniting the living room and the kitchen in a gesture that occupies the whole extension of the façade, protecting the bedrooms and allowing serenity or agitation in distinct moments. The preservation and restoration of traditional materials, such as carpentry and stuccowork, were a premise to the project, which aimed to smoothly combine the pre-existing elements and the new ones. In a house in only 55m2, the circulation spaces were reduced to its minimum dimension - a box that opens or closes to the social area, rationalizing the distribution to the remaining private spaces. This new configuration, more flexible, allows intimacy or open space – as one wishes to live.