Hasta La Ideas

Portuguese studio Tiago do Vale Arquitectos has renovated a townhouse in Braga that was built as a servants’ house in the late nineteenth century and modelled on the style of an Alpine chalet (+ slideshow).

Tiago do Vale Arquitectos overhauled all three storeys of the Three Cusps Chalet, which was originally built at a time when a number of migrants were returning to Portugal from Brazil and were commissioning grand houses influenced by trends from across Europe and South America.

Now transformed into a light and modern home and workplace for a couple, the old house forms part of a row of three properties that were built to house the servants of a nearby palace, combining typical Portuguese materials and proportions with Alpine forms and details.

“In general everything is original, or reconstructed as the original, which required the elimination of many unqualified more recent add-ons,” the architects told Dezeen.

A vivid shade of turquoise differentiates the building from its neighbours, while decorative eaves and stonework have been restored around the edges of the roof and windows.

“We used a combination between the colour palette of the nineteenth century – pastels were quite popular at that time and in this region – and a sensibility to harmonise it with the street at its present state,” said the architects.

Unnecessary partitions and extensions were removed from the interior, creating open-plan spaces that are defined by the position of a central staircase that had previously been boxed in.

At street level, a large split-level space with a white marble floor can function as either a shop or office. A large glass partition fronts the staircase on the left-hand side of the space, revealing the route up to the domestic spaces above.

This staircase narrows with each flight of stairs, intended to emphasise how the degree of privacy increases on the upper levels.

The first floor sits just above the ground level at the rear of the building, which created an opportunity for a small outdoor deck. A kitchen and dining area are just in front, while the living room is positioned opposite.

The final storey accommodates a large bedroom with simple furnishings, as well as a timber-lined dressing room that contrasts with the clean white aesthetic of the other rooms.

Photography is by João Morgado.

Here’s a project description from Tiago do Vale Architects:

The Three Cusps Chalet

Historical context

In the second half of the 19th century Portugal saw the return of a large number of emigrants from Brazil. While returning to their northern roots, specially in the Douro and Minho regions, they brought with them sizeable fortunes made in trade and industry, born of the economic boom and cultural melting pot of the 19th century Brazil. With them came a culture and cosmopolitanism that was quite unheard of in the Portugal of the eighteen-hundreds.

That combination of Brazilian capital and taste sprinkled the cities of northern Portugal with examples of rich, quality architecture, that was singular in its urban context and frequently informed by the best that was being done in both Europe and Brazil.

Built context

The “Three Cusps Chalet” is a clear example of the Brazilian influence over Portuguese architecture during the 19th century, though it’s also a singular case in this particular context.

Right as the Dom Frei Caetano Brandão Street was opened, a small palace was being built in the corner with the Cathedral’s square and thanks to large amounts of Brazilian money. It boasted high-ceilings, rich frescos, complex stonework, stucco reliefs and exotic timber carpentry. In deference to such noble spaces, the kitchen, laundry, larders and personnel quarters, which were usually hidden away in basements and attics, were now placed within one contiguous building, of spartan, common construction.

Built according to the devised model of an alpine chalet, so popular in 19th century Brazil (with narrow proportions, tall windows, pitched roofs and decorated eaves), the “Three Cusps Chalet” was that one building.

Due to the confluence of such particular circumstances it’s quite likely the only example of a common, spartan, 19th century building of Brazilian ancestry in Portugal.

Siting at the heart of both the Roman and medieval walls of Braga, a stone’s throw away from Braga’s Cathedral (one of the most historically significant of the Iberian Peninsula) this is a particularly sunny building with two fronts, one facing the street at west and another one, facing a delightful, qualified block interior plaza at east, enjoying natural light all day long.

At the time of our survey, its plan is organised by the staircase (brightened by a skylight), placed at the centre of the house and defining two spaces of equal size, east and west, on each of the floors.

The nature of each floor changes from public to private as we climb from the store at the street level to a living room (west) and kitchen (east) at the first floor, with the sleeping quarters on top.

Materials-wise, all of the stonework and the peripheral supportive walls are built with local yellow granite, while the floors and roof are executed with wooden beams with hardwood flooring.

Architectural project

Confronted by both its degrading state and degree of adulteration, and by the interest of its story and typology, the design team took as their mission the recovery the building’s identity, which had been lost in 120 years of small unqualified interventions. The intention was to clarify the building’s spaces and functions while simultaneously making it fit for today’s way of living.

The program asked for the cohabitation of a work studio and a home program. Given the reduced area of the building, the original strategy of hierarchising spaces by floor was followed. The degree of privacy grows as one climbs the staircase. The stairs also get narrower with each flight of steps, informing the changing nature of the spaces it connects.

A willingness to ensure the utmost transparency throughout the building, allowing light to cross it from front to front and from top to bottom, defined all of the organisational and partitioning strategies resulting in a solution related to a vertical loft.

The design team took advantage of a 1.5 m height difference between the street and the block’s interior plaza to place the working area on the ground level, turning it westward and relating it to the street. Meanwhile, the domestic program relates with the interior plaza and the morning light via a platform that solves the transition between kitchen and exterior. This allows for both spaces to immediately assert quite different personalities and light, even though they are separated by just two flights of stairs.

The staircase geometry, previously closed in 3 of its sides, efficiently filters the visual relations between both programs while still allowing for natural light to seep down from the upper levels and illuminate the working studio.

The second floor was kept for the social program of the house. Refusing the natural tendency for compartmentalising, the staircase was allowed to define the perimeters of the kitchen and living room, creating an open floor with natural light all day long. Light enters from the kitchen in the morning, from the staircase’s skylight and from the living room in the afternoon.

Climbing the last and narrow flights of stairs we reach the sleeping quarters where the protagonist is the roof, whose structure was kept apparent, though painted white. On the other side of the staircase, which is the organising element on every floor, there’s a clothing room, backed by a bathroom.

If the visual theme of the house is the white colour, methodically repeated on walls, ceilings, carpentry and marble, the clothing room is the surprise at the top of the path towards the private areas of the house. Both the floor and roof structure appear in their natural colours surrounded by closet doors constructed in the same material. It reads as a small wooden box, a counterpoint to the home’s white box and being itself counterpointed by the marble box of the bathroom.

Materials

Fitting with the strategy of maximising light and the explicitness of the spaces, the material and finish choices used in this project were intentionally limited. White colour was used for the walls, ceilings and carpentry due to its spacial qualities and lightness. Wood in its natural colour is used for the hardwood floors and clothing room due to its warmth and comfort. Portuguese white Estremoz marble, which covers the ground floor, countertops and on the bathrooms and laundry walls and floors, was chosen for its texture, reflectivity and colour.

All of the original wood window frames of the main façade were recovered, the roof was remade with the original Marseille tiles over a pine structure and the decorated eave restored to its original glory.

The hardwood floors were remade with southern yellow pine over the original structure and all the surfaces that required waterproofing covered with Portuguese Estremoz marble.

Ground floor window frames were remade in iron, as per the original, but redesigned in order to maximise natural illumination (as on the east façade).

Architecture: Tiago do Vale Architects, Portugal
Location: Sé, Braga, Portugal
Construction: Constantino & Costa
Project year: 2012
Construction year: 2013
Site area: 60 m2
Construction area: 165 m2

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Shimmering brass walls surround this arts centre that Portuguese firm Pitagoras Arquitectos have just completed in Guimarães.

The new two-storey structure comprises a series of irregularly stacked volumes that extend out from a refurbished row of existing buildings on the edge of an old market square in the city centre.

Rows of rectilinear brass pipes give the centre its ridged golden facade, while mirrors clad the underside of cantilevered rooms on the first floor.

Two underground levels are located beneath the square to provide galleries, an auditorium and a car park, plus the building also houses creative workshops and offices.

The opening of the centre ties in with the city’s status as European Capital of Culture for 2012 and will showcase a permanent collection of works by local artist Jose de Guimarães.

Buildings with golden exteriors have been popular in the last year and so far we’ve featured a library, a pavilion, a museum and a wedding chapel with golden walls.

See all our stories about golden projects »

Photography is by Joao Morgado.

Here’s some text prepared by the architects:

Platform of Arts and Creativity
International Centre for the Arts Jose de Guimarães
Guimarães, Portugal

The buildings that make up the Municipal Market and the space defined by them, commonly referred to as “the square”, a name inherited from market square are, as a unit, characteristic elements of the urban landscape of the city of Guimarães.

The grounds of the old municipal market boasted a privileged and very central location with excellent accesses, very close to the Toural Square and the historic center.

With this project, the transformation of the marketplace into a multifunctional space dedicated to artistic, economic, cultural and social activities within the scope of European Capital of Culture 2012, allowed for the physical and functional reintegration into the urban fabric, to become a reality and so, to recover one key area of the city space.

In addition, the operation extended to adjacent plots, enabling the regeneration of the interior space of the block, which was completely uncharacterized, as a result of its occupation by a marble processing industry.

The program provided a clear concept and defined the objectives intended to achieve with this infrastructure, listing a series of skills and spaces that constitute the functional program for both the new and the existing buildings, as well as the adjacent plots of land.

For this purpose three major program areas were defined:

1. Art Center, which houses a permanent collection, in this case the Collection of José Guimarães, temporary exhibition area, a multipurpose space for additional activities, performances and shows, in addition to a series of complementary services.

2. Creative Labs (business support offices) for the reception and installation of activities related to creative industries, allowing the development of business projects.

3. Workshops to Support Emerging Creativity, consisting of workspaces and creative vocation for young creators in various areas, hoping to develop projects on a temporary basis.

Finally, the intent to recover the existing building on the eastern side, trying to promote the installation of additional commercial activities that could enhance the creation of a space with a broad scope in regards to multidisciplinary cultural activities.

The whole structure, according to the program would complement the existing equipment in the city, as well as those which are under development within the European Capital of Culture.

When interpreting the program, we aimed to allow for the possibility of each one of its components to function independently and simultaneously, creating accesses to each of the various services and support areas, as well as to the outdoor square and garden.

We opted for a methodology of intervention that involves the rehabilitation of the existing building to the east, keeping the materials and textures, but redoing the entire inside at level 0.

For the building at north, and for reasons previously mentioned, the façade towards the Avenue, which characterizes the building, is renovated, but its interior and façade facing the square were object of and almost complete demolition and redesign.

Although it is intended to maintain the scale and the existing formal relations, we propose a new solution for the building that promotes a strong relationship with the square and emphasizes the relationship of this structure with the outer space.

The new building takes a radically different language, by contrast with its surroundings, both from the standpoint of their language and image, discrete, repetitive, as well as by the succession of volumes, with full and empty, marked by the juxtaposition of contrasting surfaces.

The coatings, a grid of metal profiles in brass and glass surfaces chromatised on ventilated façades, accentuates a range of textures that is intended display, more dense and opaque in the majority of faces in the case of the metal structure, and transparent when it covertly comes to glass surfaces that intentionally conceal the few openings that the building comprises.

This series of volumes and dissonant elements, which result from decomposition of the initial volume, was originated by the need to create a variety of different spaces in the exhibition area, creating a tension evident in the volume of the building and the relationship with the space of the square, making it the main feature of its design.

For the square, we formulated a proposal with a drawing significantly more aseptic and a coating with large concrete slabs, as a counterpart to the surrounding buildings, characterized as a large reception and a multifunctional meeting area, translated into a physical platform, summing its vocation as public space by nature.

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It will be an area purposely under fitted, with the preservation of the large trees to the east, by introducing some elements of vegetation along the north building, but leaving most of the free space allowing for the development of numerous spontaneously or organized activities, in the scope of the Platform or not.

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The urban furniture used in the square comprises moveable elements, allowing for a more versatile use.

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Location: Guimarães
Date: July 2012

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Architects: Pitágoras Architects
Project team: Fernando Sá, Raul Roque, Alexandre Lima, Manuel Roque

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