Vila Catarina Apartments
Oporto, Portugal
Hospitality
2.650 m2
2017
Vila Catarina Apartments transforms a former civil courtroom into 16 long-stay residential units. The project works through selective reuse and careful architectural editing, converting an institutional interior into domestic space while retaining the building’s underlying order and presence. Rather than erase the existing fabric, the intervention takes its structure and character as the starting point for a new domestic life.
The internal layout draws on the spatial logic of early twentieth-century bourgeois homes, where rooms unfold in sequence and circulation is produced through transitions rather than corridors. This approach informs the organisation of the apartments, allowing movement to follow a measured rhythm from one space to the next. Vaulted ceilings articulate the rooms, varying in scale and geometry according to use, and establishing subtle differences in character without relying on added complexity.
Externally, the project is defined by two complementary operations. On the main, street-facing elevation, the façade is restored with restraint, preserving the stonework and introducing new blue ceramic tiling as a discreet reference to the building’s historical identity. At the rear, an elevation that had become fragmented and technically overloaded is re-composed through a secondary skin. This geometric structure extends the envelope and forms balconies overlooking the courtyard and pool, giving the apartments a new relationship to the outside while bringing coherence to the building’s massing, openings, and rhythm.
Vila Catarina frames adaptive reuse as a precise and deliberate practice. By working with what already exists, the project demonstrates how obsolete or overlooked volumes can be reclaimed through spatial clarity and continuity. It proposes a form of transformation that is neither nostalgic nor erasing, but grounded in the belief that architecture can carry its past forward while accommodating new ways of living.
Status
Built, Private
Prémios Nacionais de Arquitetura 2025 - Best Rehabilitation Project (Shortlisted), AyE Oporto Awards (Finalist), ArchDaily Brazil - Building of the Year 2026 (Nominee)
Client
Viogesp
Design team
Diogo Sousa Rocha
Duarte Ramalho Fontes
Lourenço Menezes Rodrigues
Pedro Machado
Marta Vaz
Tânia Marques
Consultants
NCREP
Vitruvio
