Architect：NOARQ - Jose Carlos Nunes de Oliveira

Location：Foz do Douro, Portugal; | ;

Project Year：2019

Category：Apartments

apartment renovation.

Edoardo Souto de Moura, 1922.

Foz do Douro, Porto.

2018 - 2019

A couple bought a well known penthouse with ocean view. The notorious housing building is almost 30 years old. It emerged while I was attending college; ravishing at the time, it remains a majesty.

They asked me to renew it by introducing minor changes – "an upgrade basically!"

I shivered! What a fear! Was it an invitation to desecration?

How do you do the renovation of a masterpiece?

How do you do the renovation of a masterpiece of an author at the peak of his activity?

Will there be place for reinterpretation in a masterpiece? Even if they call them "minor

changes"?

I felt stuck into

– Was I destined to yield to my

, only to repent of the heresy for the rest of my life?

I confessed the restlessness to the author. Usually sympathetic, after the surprise, he reassured me and I moved on.

I did the research with himself. We got together twice. I understood the untouchables and the susceptible of the work, then I freed him to his tasks.

Project and work: We have preserved and restored, but not only. I did not hold back. I could not be absolutely faithful. If I did it, it would have been my critical dissolution. The respect for Eduardo Souto Moura, the profound admiration of his work, can not radicalize me.

I subtly adulterated the kitchen, a handrail, a stone from a fireplace, and sacrificed a soaking tub.

Beside the visible restoration:

- We disassembled and stored the original stainless steel square handrails (too sturdy!), placed on both sides of the ladder. We replaced it only on the inner side, an unfinished round brass tubular waiting for aging.

 - In the kitchen, we covered the tiles and dismantled the furniture. We synthesize the design, as well as the coating of the most demanding surfaces in Corian, replacing the coatings in ceramic and Estremoz marble. We increased the capacity of the support cabinet, we integrated the appliances. In the breakfasts corner, we designed a suspended table in lacquered aluminum plate

 A similar intervention was performed in the laundry room.

- In the maid's room, we added a dressing cabinets and a shoe rack, fully occupying the walls that support them. 

- In the living room, we retired the Estremoz marble front that was delimiting the fireplace. It was ruined. The apparent robust front, besides being hopelessly fissured, was composed by overlapping 2 cm blades. We replaced it with a solid stone of  Valverde Blue, with 5 cm of thickness.

 On the wall dividing the living rooms, we removed the installation of the glass shelves and set a 5cm thick Azul Valverde stone.

We installed an extensive brass tubular lamp in the dining room ceiling

- We liberated a large part of the ceiling surface by the existing downlights.

- In the main bathroom, we eliminated the bathtub and we introduced a shower area at the same level of the floor. We designed removable cabinets to support the lavatories. We replaced the faucets.

 - We integrated the blackouts into the bedrooms and the curtain rail on the ceilings, in an imperceptible way.

  There were spotlights on the ceiling, we took out almost all of it. We stored the lighting fixtures of the author, nowadays obsolete.

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