(CASA FRONTEIRA)

Casa Fronteira is the result of a 1950’s double-storied flat refurbishment, located in one of the first housing co-operative buildings in Lisbon, designed by the architect Jorge Albuquerque.

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Starting from an internal functional organization, based on a modular system with narrow spaces, the intervention added greater flexibility and spatial dynamics to the interior, allowing it to be used more spontaneously and adapted to the new ways of living.

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The focus was to maintain the noble’s characteristics of modernist interiors by recovering existing materials, qualifying them with the use of new materials such as Kambala wood, tiles with dark green handmade glaze and a venetian stucco applied on the ceilling.

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The first floor was designed as a large social space, incorporating two movable, parallel walls, which add the possibility of different configurations: a single space at its widest volume, in a scenario where the movable walls are completely hidden; and all the other possible spatial variations, through the gradual or total subdivision or union of the hall, living room and dining room areas.

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On the upper floor, in the stair’s atrium and bedroom’s access, flexibility gives way to the exploration of the diffuse limits of space, through the spatial reflection of color, using a low ceiling covered in venetian stucco in an ochre tone. The polished surface of the ceiling also becomes a unique feature, creating a backdrop for those going up the spiral staircase.

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Kambala wood features constantly throughout the project, emphasizing the new intervention: it is used in the movable walls on the lower floor, in the redesign of the atrium on the upper floor, and simultaneously in the creation of new pieces of furniture, specifically designed and integrated into the organization of the spaces.