PAr (Plataforma de Arquitectura), the Portuguese architecture office founded by Susana Dos Santos Rodrigues, Vânia Brito Fernandes and Joana Carmo Simões, is on our radar with two cool projects. The first is Casa 1923, a boutique hotel in Faro, in the south of Portugal. The other is Muralha, a residential project with a medieval spirit...

 

How did the PAr team come together?

 

The founders of PAr have a common experience in the Aires Mateus studio in Lisbon, where we have worked together for almost two decades. During this period, we began to work together on our own projects, due to the solid personal and intellectual affinity we had established. It was during this phase that we built the first projects together, which laid the groundwork for the interests and concepts of PAr that would be developed over the following years. By the middle of the last decade, we had created a solid path of knowledge and partnership that allowed us to focus exclusively on PAr's projects. From then on, as from the beginning, we have been consistently committed to the ethical and aesthetic values of PAr design. Beyond the founding members of PAr, we highlight the collaboration with RITA ALVES (M.Arch), co-author in some projects (namely Muralha), whose unique skills match and improve the results of our projects. 

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Can we say that Casa 1923 is a project that sums up your approach to design?

 

To reinterpret the local architectural culture with a contemporary logic...

Casa 1923 is an enchanting project that follows several of our research themes, so it is not closed to the idea of reinterpretation. Although there was an existing building with ancient constructive information when the project started, the idea of reinterpretation is as alive there as in a new building project, taking our values. We believe that the ancestral knowledge of architecture is common to several cultures and places on the planet, while locally it has taken different forms of implementation, either materials or forms. This knowledge is about concepts that are not only transversal to places but also to time (such as light, orientation, weight, fluidity, relationship with nature, etc.). It is a wisdom valid for the standards and challenges of contemporary life. So we can say that Casa 1923 embodies our design approach, which we follow in all our projects.

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What were your limits in interpreting Casa 1923 with a modern logic? 

 

Casa 1923 project combines an existing building and an extension floor. In both interventions, one closer to renovation and the other to new construction, we used the idea of reinterpretation of the ancestral architecture. We can highlight some examples: although only the existing floor intervention uses the constructive elements of the art deco original style, all areas share natural based and locally produced materials, with traditional handcraft finishings; both floors follow the best constructive systems in terms of energy saving and sustainability; the playful spirit of the project is enhanced by hidden doors to new cabinets and service rooms in the decorated walls of the existing house, and by disappearing doors that allow fluid spaces in the upper floor. In the end, there is a common feeling through the project that erases the limits between renovation and new. We are not interested in building today as we did in the past, but in suppressing the boundaries of time by reinterpreting cultural memory with contemporary demands. So we can say that our projects are more about erasing boundaries than fixing them.

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Muralha project is a centuries-old house leaning against a medieval defensive wall. But with the materials used, the spirit of the Middle Ages is still present in the house. Could you briefly summarize what you did to create this atmosphere? 

 

Designing a project is often similar to writing a story, at the same time about what that place was and will be. In the Muralha project, the weight of the existing medieval defensive walls was very present. We followed the opportunity of convoking the medieval spirit, removing the quality lacking recent interventions, and adding new solid natural gestures. The materials used were heavy, with desaturated colors: massive limestone elements; exposed solid wood boards; natural brass hardware; lime based stuccos and paints; slim iron window frames. But the reinterpretation of a medieval atmosphere cannot be reduced to materials. The project aimed to invent new spaces within the existing building, as all the rooms were a new role. Cabinets were created to add depth to the walls, creating a series of arches and niches. The medieval concept was reinforced by the carefully chosen temperature and location of the lighting, and by the specific design of solid wood furniture. We designed this project together with Rita Alves (M.Arch), whose experience and knowledge were essential for the project.

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What are some of your biggest design influences? 

 

Similar interests in architecture led us to work together, after which we developed other common influences. We can emphasize the Portuguese influences: our common background in the studio of Aires Mateus; the publication “Arquitectura Popular em Portugal”, which resulted from a study by the Association of Architects on popular architecture in the 1950s; the Portuguese "Plain Style" architecture of the 16th century; and the Pritzker Prize-winning Portuguese architects Álvaro Siza and Souto de Moura, especially the former. We also frequently revisit our Mediterranean and Classical heritage, the ancestral Japanese architecture, 20th century modernism in its many forms (the North American Frank Lloyd Wright, the Nordic architecture of Alvar Aalto, the London Brutalism), contemporary Swiss architecture (especially Peter Zumthor), among others.