Since the beginning, Benfica’s project (Lisbon, Portugal) showed itself as a challenging exercise. Not just because of the apartment’s architectural conditions, but also because the decisions of the interior space reorganization depended on the status of these same conditions. Nevertheless, it was clear that some of the pre-existing materials were meant to be kept in the new project, this decision also depended of the possibility of recovering these materials because some of them were very deteriorated, such as: the bedrooms and living room’s wooden floors and also the kitchen’s stone chimney. This last one showed itself as a rich design element giving a noble quality to the kitchen’s space.
When it was not possible to maintain the original materials, new ones were created, always having in mind the original ones and always reinterpreting its design. This is possible to observe in the hydraulic tiles used in the kitchen and in the bathroom’s floor. In these last two spaces, we can find a strong balance between the present life of the existing materials and its old personality, which comes from the roots of a local architecture. Therefore, it was possible to create an apartment with three bedrooms and one living room. This last one communicates with the rest of the spaces and at the same time opens itself to the entrance hall; witch was created to be the core of the apartment. Although it is a small space in terms of its dimensions, it has the power to generate the subsequent rooms.
Keywords: degeneration, existing elements, reinterpretation
