DL House

Siting
The project was designed for a building located in the historical centre of Porto, a part of a block composed by 4 buildings built in the early XX century. The building was divided into two separate areas: a store and a house, with no link in between them.

The ground floor serves as the commercial area with a double height ceiling (4,6m) and has direct access to the street. The housing area is composed by the first floor and an attic, and is accessed laterally through a gate, which also serves as entrance to the remaining buildings that leads to the interior of the block by an outside corridor.

Program
The program is characterized as "home for an artist". The owner, is a Porto established artist that intended and aimed to join in this building his house, his studio and his large collection. All in the same space.

Proposal/Concept
Exteriors: the urban landscape and context of the building was determinant for the choice to recover the entire exterior of the building. The exterior walls were recovered with the original missing tiles and the existing window frames made out of aluminum were replaced with wood, as to give back the building's original aesthethic concept and feel.

Interiors: Due to the degrading shape of the building, as well as modern-day living and design patterns, the decision was made to demolish the whole inside area, leaving only the slab that separates the store from the housing area.

The pre-existing structure of the building was used to create a vertical loft layout made up of 4 storeys, crossed by a single, vertical, 9.6m height, loose, multi-purpose element, which separates and shapes the layout of each floor. The only closed space is the bedroom.

The studio and the storage area where put into the fisrt and second floors, making up a single section that is divided by a mezzanine (2nd floor ). Along both of the 1st and 2nd floors, the central element functions both as a separator between the studio and the storage area as well as a large scale shelf, where the property owner's thousands of small drawings and sculptures are to be stored. In the storage area a metallic grid with two repository levels was placed in both floors, in order to stash the countless paintings that the artist has produced along the years.

The third floor is where the living area was placed. Here, the central element is transformed into a kitchen holder, dividing the space into a kitchenette style living room and a small foyer, where the original main entrance is located.

The last floor is a central mezannine, supported only by the lateral walls and with view to both sides of the house, where the central element is once again transformed into a shelf. The staircase cuts throught the building, siding the multi-functional central element, which allows to shape and underline the vertical loft concept and language that was used on this project.

Materials
Stripped contemporary materials chosen for the interiors are in total contrast with the exterior of the building. Outside, the old look of the façade was recover; inside, contemporary materials and visual aesthetics shape the way the space is used and felt once again.

The walls, ceilings and carpentry were painted in white, microcement in grey color is used in the floors and OSB (oriented strand board) was chosen for the central element for its color and texture. But still there was a clear concern of creating small links between the old identity of the building and the new, by using materials such as wood in its natural color on the staircase, tiles on the bathroom and crafted hydraulic tiles in the kitchen pavement.

URBAstudios
Nuno Alves de Carvalho