Location Ponta Delgada, Açores, Portugal
Year of project completion 2016
Total built area 285m²
Photography Paulo Goulart
Engineering Eng. Ricardo Côrte-Real Pacheco, Eng. Pedro Cabral
Client Private
Located in an excellent area of the historic centre of the city of Ponta Delgada, the bar is located on the first floor of an old single-family house from the 19th century. With unobstructed views over the Igreja da Matriz and the Portas da Cidade, the project seeks to enhance the existing interior space, reusing and enhancing the old mezzanine of the house where the family’s clothes were once hung out to dry. The first floor is divided into a large open space which houses the bar, the stage and the sound/DJ space, in an antechamber with access to the mezzanine, as well as bathrooms and a lounge space.
The vertical garden that tops the bar and extends to the entrance staircase presents visitors with a natural setting that contrasts with the raw interior walls, which need to be plastered and painted. During the project, and not disregarding the original design of the house, an attempt was made to reuse the old location of the bathroom to house the current facilities. The exposed stone masonry walls and the old washbasins in chiselled basalt characterise the space. The house’s old bathtub was converted into a decorative object to create a safety barrier under the staircase leading to the mezzanine.
The structure and smoke exhaust pipes, as well as the cork in the roof, in shades of chocolate brown, or the existing interior walls in shades of anthracite grey, create an industrial setting that contrasts with the natural environment of the vertical garden, as well as the sporadic placement of plant pots, tables, and benches made of laminated tree stumps. A dried root spreads along the wall of the entrance to the bar. It is this formal mélange that creates a true symbiosis and make the place so pleasant to visit.
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