Housing with Pink Chimneys

The empty plot is small and limited, and so are the rules that apply to it: the whole volume is fixed as a slightly skewed four-storey box with a setback at the top. The Portuguese design team chose to be ambitious, complex and joyful anyway.

It begins with a stair that avoids the obvious. As it climbs, it nudges and reshapes the three apartments it serves, whose rooms take intricate forms from the intersections, with slanted walls, stepped surfaces and tilted ceilings all painted blue.

Exposed concrete ceilings, striped wooden floors, tiles and terrazzo, slim handrails, marble pieces and mirrors complete the palette. Outside, the white volume is wrapped in two overlapping patterns of marble lines and dots that continue across the long blind wall, topped by pink chimneys.