ATTIC WOOD STRUCTURE

O Sotão, Design Store, Lisbon

NEGRO DO FUMO

Laboratorio Chimico, Instituto Politécnico de Lisboa

STONE PAVING DESIGN

Anfitheater of "Laboratorio Chimico", Lisbon

LABORATORIO DE CHIMICA

 "Laboratorio de Chimica", Escola Politécnica de Lisboa

MÃE D'ÁGUA

The main cornice at the Mãe d'Água in Lisbon. This was one of the main water reservoirs in town, terminating the huge aqueduct of Águas Livres. The simple detailing reveals the utilitarian nature of the building, its refinement the elegance of ages past. Under Lisbon's harsh light, the moldings become bold, shadows deep and planes of light disappear into the texture of the limestone.

CHIMNEY AT CALÇADA DA GLÓRIA

Not sure it's a chimney, but who cares - it's a glorious plaster pile peeking from behind the church of São Roque, in Lisbon.

HARDWARE

Casa de Santa Maria, Cascais, by the architect Raul Lino. Despite his practising of what seems like traditional Portuguese architecture, he is a recurring obsession of the modernist academic establishment, probably for what he preached in his books. Some will be written here about this in the future, as we have lots of pictures coming from our recent Lisbon - Cascais trip.

MAYBE BETTER DAYS WILL COME

Statue at the church-convent complex of São Francisco, Porto.

ON SITE - BACK TO HISTORY CLASS

At our fourth year in Architecture School we had to survey and draw this church. Igreja de S.Roque, Bairro Alto, Lisboa.
It's a "living-room" church, a box with well defined limits and no spatial intrusions like gothic pillars or buttresses.

ON SITE - CASA DE SANTA MARIA

Cascais, Raul Lino.

CORNER CRAZE, BRAGA

"Perversion on every corner" - when I was in New York I heard that as a design request more than once. I bet whoever dreamt up these windows, stacked hipnotic cornices and multiple engaged sinewy pilasters had the same brief.

FLUORESCENT LIGHT FIXTURE

In a modest café in Porto, the light fixtures are still relics from an Art Deco past. More will come from said café in the future.

REALLY OLD PORTUGUESE STUFF

São Pedro das Águias near Tabuaço, Douro. Facing the river Távora, in front of steep cliffs stands this little Romanesque church with ancient hermit caves around. The entry is so close to the cold rock that it is impossible to photograph. Decorated with monsters and allegorical animals, which keep chaos out of the inner peace inside. Except for this, the details throughout are of bare simplicity and express minimalist functionality.

STAIRS

Palácio do Conde do Bolhão, Porto. The cornice detail can be seen here.

OUR HOUSE

This is where we live, in Porto. The house was built in 1927 and belonged to my grandfather's family. For decades, like so many houses featured on this blog, it was inhabited by an old lady who payed a measly rent and never did any repairwork, besides feeding hundreds of pigeons and seagulls every day, sometimes inside the house. The bitter fruits of rent control policies, which in this country were started by the fascists and continued by the socialists, are urban decay, price speculation and the engorgement of the suburbs.
Needless to say, when we started work on the house it was falling to pieces and we barely managed to save it. It was a developer's house, with a somewhat awkward internal partitioning and not very thick walls, but the details are lovely and it was easily adjusted to modern life, with no drastic alterations.
Right now it's being submitted for an award - wish us luck!

WALL TILES

 

Private House, Braga

WOOD DOOR KNOB

Palácio do Conde do Bolhão, Porto

SUMMER TIME!

Palácio do Conde do Bolhão, Porto. The "count" or his decorator had a perverse sense of humour and incorporated a couple of tomatoes and a cucumber as a motif for his cornice, in one of the beads. In Portuguese the phallic references are literal. Above, a repeating fork and spoon in another reed sound innocent by comparison, and still above a frieze of grapes mixed with pineapples makes no mistakes: hospitality together with plentifulness. One can only imagine the parties this place must have seen, and its signs are immortalized in stucco.

MARBLED SURFACE

Palácio do Conde do Bolhão, Porto

CORNICE WITH DOORS

This stucco frieze has French doors as part of the decoration, complete with arches, rustication and keystones. As if a mini-façade was inside the salon. The joints confirm this was a stock motif.
Palácio do Conde do Bolhão, Porto.