Architect-Designed Courtyard House in Lisbon

Some houses are designed; this one was uncovered. In Arroios, one of Lisbon’s oldest neighbourhoods of potters and workshops, a former factory has become a contemporary townhouse by architect João Favila Menezes of Atelier Bugio. From the private lane it gives almost nothing away: a white saw-tooth façade and, above it, the brick chimney that once marked the working day. Beyond lies one of the most singular homes in the city.

Inside, everything turns towards the courtyard. Open to the sky and planted with trees, it is the true centre of the house, the place every room returns to. Light falls through three floors, from bedrooms lined in warm sucupira wood to garden rooms on handmade terracotta, and down to a quiet spa in pink Lioz, the stone of Lisbon’s monuments. Two bedrooms climb to mezzanines beneath the roof; the kitchen glows in hand-glazed red tiles. In summer the courtyard is an outdoor room; in winter, a lantern at the heart of the house.

Few houses for sale in Lisbon carry their history so lightly. The industrial past survives not as decoration but as scale, proportion and silence, rewritten in concrete, copper and clay by one of the most thoughtful studios in contemporary Portuguese architecture. A rare courtyard house in the centre of the city, minutes from Graça and Intendente, with 420 m² of living space, a garage and a private spa.