Tower in the Urban Glade

The project consists of a tower encompassing two different typologies of apartment - a small and a big one. There is also another building encompassing an exception type of apartment that gives it the ability to divide between an office and a conventional apartment and an office building. Bringing all three together there is a landscaped ramp.

This "urban glade" of some sort is also not very evident from the main avenues that pass nearby and this allied to the emptiness of the space was what drove me to build a tower - a quite unconventional approach in Lisbon where the great majority of building don't overpass 10 floor. By making a tower I am trying to preserve the exceptionality of the space available around it and also denouncing its presence to the rest of the city - as a beacon. I wanted the tower itself not to be very monotonous and thus both the big and the small apartment typologies have three different configuration that are the stacked giving it a more random appearance in the composition of the elevation. The other residential building is reminiscent of a typical typology of the XXth century in Lisbon where apartment would have a public area that would work as an office where a person could receive client without they entering the private areas of the house. In this case it work more as a studio, where the office is open to the living room crating a generous space for a home worker. This building allied to the office building make the consolidation and transition with the existing building in the corner of the plot. Being the project about leaving as much outside space available as possible, the rest of the space in the plot is transformed into a sizeable landscaped ramp with walking parts that works both as an access to the foot bridge over the train track and as a leisure area facing south with no building in front as a garden or a park. The ramp also works as a sound and visual barrier to the train that passes behind it. The commercial area fills the space below the ramp that creates a sheltered path in front of shops and connects both sides of the plot. Under the entire plot there is a sloped garage – due to the ramp above and the topography around it – that provides parking for all the uses in the project.