The newest integrated residential and design project, theault Apartment by Studio Gameiro, is approximately 157m2 in size and is located in a singular building on the historic Rua de São Bento in Lisbon. This street has witnessed all the comings and goings of History being played directly on its doorsteps, and is a living, breathing cosmos and creative beehive bang in the historical core of the city.
As good and long-lasting stories go, they wanted to take this challenge a bit further as a unique opportunity to go that extra mile and were extremely fortunate to find such an interesting couple moving into the city who handed them the challenge to design and build something completely unique which played, and twisted, with the usual notions and principles of space. Besides all this, the silver lining about how a former arch shaped the apartment and its inception, needed to be told.
As such, the perfect metaphor for the VAULT project is that the inside of the apartment mimics what the street has lacked for decades, and which used to define it as a starting and finishing point: the Arch of São Bento. The fact that the arch still exists nowadays but is now proudly alone in another square of Lisbon and that the marks of this “uncoupling” are still deeply visible on the street itself (and on the tiny rocky side which connects it to the National Parliament), gave the studio an extra shot of energy to create something deeply rooted on the notion of the unexpected/ unusual.
This historic but grounded reference to arched forms is now perceived throughout its operational/logistics framework, and its visual identity. As they showcase it here, so much of what is layered under the coats of paint they used is now visible, perceived, and revealed. As it should.