LISBON, PORTUGAL 2005

A white and neutral background, the scenario that serves as the basis for the creative work which is its ‘raison d’être’. Exhibition gallery to the works, a space to present the projects that are developed there or just free space for everything to happen. Just space, that was briefly the clear request that served as the motto for the project of Fernanda Fragateiro’s atelier, in an eighteenth-century building at Lisbon’s ‘Pombal’ downtown.

We sought to clarify the existing typology and provide the various spaces with the most technologically advanced infrastructures, without, however, reveal their existence, maintaining the image of the ‘Pombal’ structure intact. Old techniques were recovered in the consolidation of the wooden structures and traditional stuccos, and all of this was opposed to the wiring, infrastructures and other systems and mechanisms more contemporary.

We searched that, in the end, it resulted subtly overlapped the distinctly austere, almost Spartan, character of the original structure, and the comfort allowed by technology. That is, that the work of project and construction, time consuming and thorough, violent or sensitive, in the end all that was left was the slight impression that nothing had been changed after all.