ARX

The project began with the challenge of working from the memory of the former industrial pavilions of an olive oil factory, preserved only through the few traces that remain today — the façades, already marked by successive alterations — and integrating them into a new architectural concept, with a new use and in a new era.

A further challenge was to reconcile the memory of the factory with the integration of an existing residential building, entirely different in scale and character, within a highly restrictive contemporary regulatory framework that tends to encourage increasingly uniform architectural responses.

At the same time, the project sought to interpret the presence of a spacious rear courtyard, enclosed between the building and an imposing retaining wall supporting the hillside above which the railway line runs.

The response is an architecture that clearly expresses its contemporaneity while revealing the historical layers corresponding to different periods and building typologies, unified through colour, materials and rhythm. At the rear, an expressive and lush garden takes over the courtyard, “climbing” onto the balconies across the different floors and reaching the upper terrace. From there, views unfold across Lisbon’s diverse character — industrial, residential, semi-rural and maritime — towards the Tagus waterfront.