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Graça Apartment

Fala Atelier renewed an apartment in Graça, Lisbon, which features a long main space, a “living gallery” rather than a living room, distributing different private rooms.

The apartment lies in an unremarkable building in Lisbon. Its obsolete fragmented typology presented a series of small rooms, some devoid of natural light, and an impractical exterior bathroom. The intervention aimed to erase these faults and to clarify the use of the available surface: a gently curved wall was extended from facade to facade, defining the limit between a vast common space and the different private rooms.

Fala Atelier, Graça Apartment, Lisbon, 2016

Fala Atelier, Graça Apartment, Lisbon, 2016

Fala Atelier, Graça Apartment, Lisbon, 2016

Fala Atelier, Graça Apartment, Lisbon, 2016

Fala Atelier, Graça Apartment, Lisbon, 2016

The long main space serves as living but also as dining and kitchen area; it is a living gallery rather than a living room. Its curved wall is punctuated by hand-painted doors in different shades of blue, hanging detached from the floor like a set of monochrome paintings. There is a carefully calibrated clash between the lightness of the curve and the rigidity of its elevation.

The materials and orientations of the floors underline the functional distinction through the apartment. A small roof area was reclaimed behind the back facade: the new courtyard-like space provides an exterior addition to the living room, natural but unexpected for an apartment on a second storey.

Fala Atelier, Graça Apartment, Lisbon, 2016

Fala Atelier, Graça Apartment, collage

Fala Atelier, Graça Apartment, collage

Fala Atelier, Graça Apartment, plan

Fala Atelier, Graça Apartment, axonometric view

Graça Apartment, Lisbon
Program: apartment
Architects: Fala Atelier
Design team: Filipe Magalhães, Ana Luisa Soares, Ahmed Belkhodja, Clara Pailler, Mariana Silva, Lera Samovich
Completion: 2016

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Graça Apartment

Fala Atelier renewed an apartment in Graça, Lisbon, which features a long main space, a “living gallery” rather than a living room, distributing different private rooms.

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