Desterro

Lodging and services | João Favila, João Simões e Pedro Domingos arquitectos

One of the historically most valuable buildings in the city of Lisbon.

The property is strongly marked by the successive changes carried out for more than two centuries, to adapt the space of the Monastery to Hospital, corresponding in most cases to careless interventions and very dissonant of the Monastery’s architectural identity. The property is vacant since 2007.

The project designed for the building continues the previous licensing process, in which it is intended to “free” the property from the dissonant constructions carried out during the period of the hospital occupation.

This cleaning and demolition intervention will return part of the Monastery building, revealing a series of notable spaces, fundamentally constituted by stone vaults and pillars, which are hidden inside the partitions and false ceilings that subdivide the various floors of the Monastery. These demolitions will reveal and provide spaces that were originally more open, create better and wider circulation spaces, improving the path systems and access to different floors.

A first partial intervention on the property was planned, with only the first four floors being intervened at this stage.

Each floor will function independently, with full autonomy of access.

The implementation of the future property occupation program will be carried out with reversible, non-intrusive systems, using removable structures and facilities, seeking that this intervention of cleaning and revealing the property remains beyond the next occupation cycle.

Floors 1, 2 and 3 are expected to have an independent and autonomous use for different purposes / activities. And on the 4th floor there will be installed a housing unit that follows the concept of the ZERO Box Lodge – the modular system of removable wooden capsules.