BALCONY CORNER

The multiplication of different materials harmoniously blended at this corner in Régua is staggering. Plaster walls, stone balcony-cornices, painted corrugated sheet metal siding, clay tiles, wood trim and wrought iron railings.

CASA HORTÍCOLA

Casa Hortícola, Mercado do Bolhão, Porto.
A lot has already been said about this in The World of Interiors, but unfortunately it's not availabe online. The seed store is a gem on one of the corners of the Bolhão market in Porto. The market is visited by hundreds of tourists every day, but in spite of this its conditions border the insalubrious, with pigeons walking inbetween the flowers and pieces of stucco falling from the ceiling. The produce is without compare in the city though, and we can only hope this store remains open for long.

WALL

A "tabique" wall in Mizarela, near Guarda. Horizontal boards, vertical boards, and wood lath before the final lime plaster layer.

PLASTER TEXTURE

Garagem Passos Manuel, Porto  (1937 - Architect Mário Abreu)

30's STAIRS

Garagem Passos Manuel, Porto  (1937 - Architect Mário Abreu)

STONE MADNESS II

Side Chapel, Church of São Roque, Lisbon. The intarsia work is stone madness at its best, but compared to the Chapel of S. João Baptista, in the same church, the overall design result seems rough and naive.

STONE MADNESS I

 

Capela de São João Baptista, Igreja de São Roque, Lisbon.
The church is the Portuguese "shoe-box" or "living room" type, with adjacent chapels. One of these was made in Italy - already at the time, taste was being exported everywhere. So a scale model was built, approved by the King, and years later the whole thing arrived disassembled in Lisbon in crates, a bit like an impossibly upscale Ikea closet. The design architects here were Luigi Vanvitelli and Nicola Salvi, with direction from the Italianized German Ludovice, who was working in Portugal at the time - the late 1740s. Besides the gilding and bookmatching of the stone, the architectural layout of the chapel is a fully mature Roman Baroque (albeit already in its more rigid later form) and looks especially sophisticated when in comparison to its crude local counterparts.

STONE PAVING DESIGN

Anfitheater of "Laboratorio Chimico", Lisbon

MARBLED SURFACE

Palácio do Conde do Bolhão, Porto

EXTERIOR WALL TILES, EDGE AND CORNER

Marinha Grande.

EXTERIOR WALL TILES

Marinha Grande.

ERNEST KORRODI - HOUSE IN LEIRIA - I

This is the first of three posts by the Swiss architect, Ernest Korrodi (1870-1944), author of more than 400 buildings all over Portugal. In Leiria, the city where he lived and worked, he was the author of many residences and public buildings. Among his work in Leiria is the creative restoration of the Castle, which is controversial still today. Other important works in the city are the Town Hall and the Bank of Portugal building. The pictures above show the stair and atrium of the residential building Marques da Cruz, built in the 1920s and located in Rua Mouzinho da Silveira.

SLATE WALL TEXTURE

A side wall in a private House, Porto, covered in slate tiles.

HAND PAINTED EAVE TILES

STUC PIERRE

Private house in Rua do Heroísmo, Porto

HAND PAINTED EXTERIOR WALL TILES

Private house, Peso da Régua

WOOD GRID PANELS

 

Casa de Mateus, Vila Real. 

TILES

Palácio Nacional de Sintra, Sintra