Casa de São Marcos Rehabilitation
by António Pedro Faria

Casa de São Marcos is a rehabilitation project that answers the client’s needs to transform a XIX century building whilst preserving its qualities.

The two storey apartment is divided to create a studio and a 2-bedroom apartment.

The architect’s starting point was to analyse the existing features adding only when necessary. The work focused on the ground floor entrance, the common staircase and the 2nd and 3rd floors.

Since it was important to maintain the business that has been occupying the ground and first floor for the past years.

In order to maintain the original wooden staircase unaltered, the project includes a system that works by separating the common space from the private one without taking away the natural light.

A wooden structure and translucent polycarbonate panels.

The two apartments were provided with bathroom and kitchen cores. In the studio apartment, the bathroom is designed as a functional structure.

With its enclosing walls serving also as a wardrobe and shelving unit.

The kitchen is located in an existing volume that projects itself from the main space receiving natural light and ventilation.

In the 2-bedroom apartment, the bathroom-and-kitchen core takes advantage of the double height room, by building a mezzanine separated from the main floor.

Creating a more secluded space that can be occupied freely.

The existing qualities of this building are not only the spatial ones. The original materials and decorative elements are extremely beautiful and historically representative of the XIX Portuguese architecture.

The project worked on some of these features restoring part of original wooden floors, the decorative ceiling and the skylight stucco, the wooden doors and window frames, giving back its function and beauty.

The strategy adopted at Casa de São Marcos encompasses a process of intervention and preservation of its existing structure, potentiating its qualities, only adding in when required, through very precise and meaningful interventions.

In the end, the project tries to answer the not always easy task of mediating between the existing building and the client’s contemporary needs for it.

Author António Pedro Faria
Client Private
Surface 190 sqm
Constructor AOF
Photography Tiago Casanova
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