An apartment in Amarante, Portugal, within a building on the street, has been transformed into a well-divided space that seems to be suspended and almost in motion. The renovation project is by studio Fala, which renovated the interior and facades while trying to preserve the building’s history and original traits, at the same time adding new features.

The facades have a new face that emerges from the painted window frames, the renovation of the old granite and the addition of new marble details that show how the exteriors have also been enhanced. 

The flat, spread over five floors and 290 square metres, is built around a new added structure: a concrete fireplace that crosses the various levels with its chimney and serves to heat the ground floor room. The chimney dictates the layout of the space, organising it. A staircase wraps around and connects the rooms, emerging with its light pink hue, matching the mint green used for the ceiling and floor. 

In the house, walls and partitions with rounded shapes separate spaces, making the dwelling fluid, functional, almost soft. It seems that the house shapes new forms and expands through the use of the circle, the semicircle and curved geometries positioned around the new fulcrum of the architecture, the fireplace, drawing new spaces and areas.