A micro-city to work on, talk about and present art. Demolition scraps, found objects and new construction, architecture and furniture, the exterior and interior hybridize each other and turn the former car workshop into an extension of urban space.
Text: João Gonçalo Lopes
Photo: João Matos, Inês Costa Monteiro
The initial brief was to convert an old car workshop with 167sqm, into a collective work and event space for art related professionals. The work involved conception, coordination and construction of the interior elements like wood structures, furniture and lighting.
With big entrance gates, the space had the potential to become part of the street and bring the street life in. The project layout is based on a set of different courtyards, with different characters, around which the working pods are organized. This layout was made thinking of the gradations from public to private and the different events that can happen in each place. It also aims to explore the full volume of the space by adding a new level while keeping the openness and the flow of the overall space.
From the beginning the project we aimed to introduce old materials and explore possibilities of reuse. After the schematic design, we set up to collect and inventory of old parts from demolitions that were then used to shape and hack the basic spatial scheme.
Together with the potted plants, the material palette generates a sense of an exterior environment as if extending from the street, where the pods become the small interior universes within this “outdoor” space like in a small neighbourhood.
We saw the working pods as open structures to be contaminated by their occupants. According to the different personal character of each occupier and different moments, the pods would be able to be more or less open. This generates very diverse and dynamic gradations of permeability within the same frame.
Through the experience of building it ourselves we were able to tune each element to its final position, allowing us to think closer to the body scale. It became a very close and attentive process where each material and detail could be brought to its full potential.
This attention to the combination of materials allowed us to create different a micro-cosmos for each working area within the overall space.
Materialization
The existing concrete floor of the car shop was covered with grey epoxy resin and the walls repaired and painted white.
Starting from this grey and white canvas, our material palette comes essentially from the reuse and combination of found materials with wood structures. We intentionally looked for materials that could bring vibrancy and texture to the interior design.
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Most of the basic structures and flooring of the working pods were built with pine wood, providing us with a basic framework that we were able to contaminate with the found materials.
Plants also became part of this palette: they work as soft mediators between privacy and exposure, breaking and blurring the hard edges of the wood structures.
Info & credite
Project name: Desvio, creative work space
Completion year: 2021
Gross built area: 167 m2
Location: Lisbon, Bairro da Estefânia
Programme: Creative work and event space
Architects: João Gonçalo Lopes
Project team: João Gonçalo Lopes, Guilherme Rodrigues
Construction: João Gonçalo Lopes, Guilherme Rodrigues, Gui Garrido
Electrical installation: Tiago Domingues, André Santos
