Fernandes Tomás

The Fernandes Tomás Apartment had origin in an unusual pre-existing building, part of the old and traditional Porto urban mesh, that was target of an urban rehabilitation exercise, which sought to explore a new spatial contemporaneity, providing strong sensations to the user. A building of longitudinal volumetry, with openings over the street and over the adjoining private exterior patios, typical of the city.

The program arises from some concisely delineating intentions, such as the creation of a space based in searching for light, of minimalist raw spaces, and outdoor spaces such as a patio and an access to the roof with its swimming pool. Thus, seeking a disruption with the traditionally attributed conception to what a city apartment is, to create an idea of “villa” in the middle of the urban density. The essence of the project emerges from this outline of concepts, in the search for the creation of distinctive sensations camming from different environments, between light and dark, large volumes, outdoor spaces inside the house.

The itinerary starts at the façade facing the street, rehabilitated with contemporary notes, where very distinct composition elements appear. The entrance, highlighted by the access volume in the background and in the foreground by the contemporary railings inspired in traditional design, resulting from an abstraction of Portuguese tiles, in the existing upper floors of the façade the design was simplify through the windows frames composition, and finally, in a recessed volume, the vertical extension of the building.

Located in the central part of the building, nestled between two adjoining apartments, the entrance hall of the apartment isolated in volumetry, appears in a rough, minimalist way with obscured colors, dissimulate storage areas though a simple design, in a gloomy environment, in continuity with the sensation obtained along the route from the building entrance, in a kind of theatrical preparation for the surprise that approaches of spatial performance of forms, light and shadows.