Marlim Restauração Apartments | Atelier d'Arquitectura Lopes da Costa

The Marlim Restauração building was a 19th century Porto bourgeois house. The rehabilitation project aimed to convert the pre-existent building into 7 apartments of different types, all enjoying the backyard’s generous garden space. The building quality and personality soon revealed the potential for its refurbishment and reuse, making it clear that it would have to be done with great respect and care.

The intervention aimed to provide the existing 4-storey building with better conditions of habitability, health and comfort, preserving its character, personality and memory. The majority of the building was maintained, refurbished and adapted to the functionalities introduced by the new programme and contemporary way of living. The demolitions consisted in some walls and interior openings. The entire wooden structure, the wooden floors, the roof and the stairs were maintained and refurbished, as far as possible. This also happened with the ornamental plaster ceilings, friezes, trims, skirting boards and frames. In some cases, the frames have been adapted or replaced by new ones of identical design, in order to meet the new housing requirements, namely safety and thermal and acoustic comfort. The intervention consisted essentially in the construction of new kitchens and new bathrooms. They were located as much as possible next to the staircase, in order to concentrate the vertical technical ducts and minimize intervention’s impact. It was a choice to take advantage of the garret to locate bedrooms with private bathrooms, illuminated and ventilated by skylights. This allowed to create two 2-storey apartments on the top of the building.
 

The whole was enriched by the requalification of the common backyard, endowed with a generous gardened area that has a good sun exposure. This area is divided by a longitudinal gravel path that leads to a covered living area, which has also been refurbished, opened to the garden and looking towards the beautiful building. The two existing camellia trees were kept and complemented with new ones and orange trees, as well as aromatic herbs, planted along the path.