Mansion Conversion and Garden Pavilion
The Mansion, commissioned by Conselheiro Boaventura Rodrigues de Sousa in the late 19th Century, is located in an area of Avenida da Boavista where a number of old houses surrounded by gardens and dating back to the same period still survive, albeit a small representation of the urban landscape that shaped this thoroughfare as a new axis for the expansion of the bourgeois city.
In view of the fair state of repair of the building, which maintains a marked coherence in spatial, decorative and constructive terms, the works essencially included the more in-depth treatmant of the basement and attic areas (the service areas in the former residence), the restoration of deteriorated decorative elements and the installation of a number of infraestructures befitting the overall features of the mansion – thus enabling its occupation to the technical standards and with the comfort that the present requires.
The construction of a “pavilion” in the garden is intended to widen the usage possibilities of the existing building with the creation of a struture housing a multi-use, large-scale space (450m2).
This volume, of a light construtive character ( a metal struture enclosed by glass) rests on a sunken base, built in bare concrete, that includes car parking, some plant rooms and a covered walkway to the mansion, its situation, as well as its wooden lath facing, seeks an exclusive relationship with the dense copse that has been preserved and trimmed.
