Architecture Wednesday: Almirante Reis Apartment

It’s small, it’s open, it’s quirky. I love it. The Almirante Reis Apartment, a rehabilitation of an attic in a 1906 building in Lisbon, Portugal, is just for me. This apartment sits in the attic of the old building, with vaulted, wooden ceilings, beams, dormer windows and I love every eclectic inch of it..

The apartment is not quite 1,000 square feet and is basically one room, with a bathroom hidden behind brass walls. But it’s not just the modern bathroom walls, or the modern kitchen it’s the irregular stone masonry wall, the wooden beams and pillars of the roof, which are all original to the building and revealed just for this space.

The apartment was initially very partitioned and with low ceilings, but the raising of the roof and knocking down of the walls immediately transformed the space. The living is at one end of the space, with the formerly closed kitchen space, now a fully open space with large kitchen countertop and dining room sits in the middle of the room. A smaller sitting area is just beyond the dining table.

The relocation of the bathroom to the middle of the apartment makes it possible to free all the windows for the central space, though the bathroom does get sunlight through a tunnel skylight. And the bathroom stands out from the rest of the attic as it is covered in polished brass to reflect the spaces around it.

The bedroom, at the other end of the apartment, is open to the rest of the  space, but can be closed off by a golden velvet and silk curtain that runs along the extension of the brass wall. In addition, at the far end of the bedroom, is a small sitting area beneath a  window, with its own fireplace.

It’s not a huge space, though the open ceilings make it feel larger, and it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but I love it because it’s different, and small, and in Lisbon.

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