Porto, Portugal
Built in the mid-19th century to be the house of a Douro nobleman, the Former Louvre Hotel has been transformed by Diana Barros Arquitectura into a contemporary residence with great respect to all the meticulous decoration of the woodwork, the 19th-century façade, and the incredible staircase in the core of the building, which extends to the top floor and is topped off by the central skylight.
It has embodied various uses over time, from a hotel prepared to receive emperors, to the headquarters of a resistance movement against the Estado Novo, from the home of the Oporto Film Club to a driving school.
The proposed program involved making it embody another: collective housing with commerce and services on the ground floor.
Perhaps more pedestrian, but no less daring, given the dominance of tourist use in the area.
The project tried to respect the incredible polyvalence of a building that was once almost everything, keeping the organization of the common areas and accesses, the careful decorative work that survived in the stonework of the facade and in the interior and exterior carpentry, and the constructive system used in the slabs and central staircase.
The tension between the scale of the original building and the domestic uses now introduced is accentuated by the elemental design of the new elements, emphasizing the textures and colors of the materials.
The fundamental aim was to create a robust and coherent whole, functionally integrated but adaptable and capable of making the natural and human resources invested in its rehabilitation profitable, prolonging its useful life and preparing it for another century and a half of use and as many other incarnations.
Project: Former Louvre Hotel
Architects: Diana Barros Arquitectura
Lead Architect: Diana Barros
Design Team: Marcos Maia and Joana Fernandes
Photographs: Ivo Tavares Studio
