ADAPTABLE LIVING - ANALYSIS

Portela is a civil parish in the municipality of Loures, in the district of Lisbon. It was a masterplan deeply inspired by modernist that is located close to the airport and enclosed by freeways. The upper middle class inhabits this neighbourhood. 

ADAPTABLE LIVING - PLANS AND SECTION

Ground floor plan 

Cross section 

A single bed apartment can be changed easily into a three-bed apartment. The exterior private space can expand as well by adding balconies. This allows the families of the different floors to interact with each other. Different to the previous lay out, we add a common semi-public space on each floor. 

ADAPTABLE LIVING - PERSPECTIVES

The common spaces can be used in different ways, as a playground for children of just as a terrace. This gives natural daylight to the staircase and connects the floors to each other.

ADAPTABLE LIVING - FLEXIBILITY

Initial ground floor plan

Scheme diagrams

For the interior design of the apartments, we kept the structure, so the columns and the external walls. As for the interior, the wet areas are at the same place. 

ADAPTABLE LIVING - VISUALISATIONS PROTOTYPE

The concept for the new lay out is based on the prototype and the wet areas. A kitchen can be replaced easily by a bathroom just by taken off the panels and add a new ones. This flexibility allows the families to expand or to shrink according to their contemporary needs.

ADAPTABLE LIVING - PROTOTYPE

Final assembling of the pieces. 

ADAPTABLE LIVING - CONCLUSION

The goal of this project is to adapt the apartments of Portela according to the needs of contemporary families nowadays. One of the main issues for this quarter is that the population is growing older and not replaced by new inhabitants. The result is that more dwellings are becoming vacant. By developing the apartments and the public space, we try to attract new young people and families.

It used to be an exterior private space, nowadays every inhabitant made it an interior space.