The apartment renovated by Arriba – a young Lisbon-based architectural firm founded by Filipe Silva Ferreira and José Andrade Rocha in 2016 – is located on the top floor of an early 20th century building in the Marvila district of Lisbon. The interiors were degraded and characterized by an excessive fragmentation of spaces.

Arriba chooses to reduce the circulation and compartmentalisation areas of the house and creates a mezzanine in the attic, a space dedicated to work and leisure that overlooks the living area below and looks out over the city through a large skylight.

The living area is wrapped in a continuous wooden casing. The panels cover the masonry, and they become doors of storage spaces, access doors to the bedrooms and the staircase and conceal the kitchen corner through a folding door, if necessary. The same wood is then used as a floor covering and for the furnishings of the house.

The spatial interpenetration of the upper and lower floors is contrasted with a variety of materials and colour; the top of the house, all white, rests on a solid wooden base, like a light volume.