InStone is the new project located in Guarda, in the northeast of Portugal, a place known as "City of the 5 F": Abundant, strong, cold, loyal, and beautiful, (in Portuguese: Farta, Forte, Fria, Fiel e Formosa). The intervention is directed by Diogo Almeida, from the Lusitanian studio Atelier DRK, who specialized in reconstruction and renovation where the fight for sustainability and the preservation of cultural values is among its fundamental aspects when designing.

The project brings a mixture of languages, being the materiality one of the most important elements in the project, a mixture between smooth and contemporary cladding in front of thick stone walls, the language used in the different spaces of the house tried to convert a house from a block of common space to a renovated and interesting space.
Atelier DRK has designed InStone, the rehabilitation of a house in the city of Guarda, Portugal. A house that introduces a contemporary composition while ensuring the sustainability of the project as it is an affordable project for users.

Internally, the project tries to show a space that evolves, that knows how to adapt to changes. Atelier DRK turns server spaces into served spaces, converting an old corridor into a workplace like an office or even revolutionizing the original space itself, from a reading area to a guest room. The studio knows how to transform the previous program into the new needs of the client.
 

Description of project by Atelier DRK

In an early seventies building, we found an uncharacterized apartment, too compartmentalized and with little natural light. The challenge was to bring a contemporary language ensuring the comfort of modern living under controlled costs. Severely constrained by the available space, the highly detailed works of dismantling partition walls and build new space guides brought a new distribution and a smoother transition between rooms.

Finding structural walls made of stone and the impossibility of their removal brought a new problem. Keeping the stone visible turned the problem into a solution, marking the character of the space as well as its own uniqueness and exclusivity. Exploring the idea of evolutionary and adaptable architecture, incorporating flexibility into planning and designing, brought in concepts suited to the different requirements of the space appropriation, allowing the use of a hallway as an office or turn a reading area into a guest room.

The extreme care of working the light as a shaping element of the space combined with the selection of natural claddings highlights the stone, assuring the elegance and distinction of the different rooms, making the experience of this space absolutely distinctive.

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Architects
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Design team
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Main Architect.- Diogo Almeida.
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Area
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90 sqm.
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Dates
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2020.
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Location
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Guarda, District of Guarda, Beiras and Serra Da Estrela, Portugal.
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Photography
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The Atelier DRK Studio, founded in 2009, has been testing ideas, researching, and growing in the field of architecture. Ensuring interpersonal relationships with clients, partners, and suppliers, is through a confrontation of ideas and thoughts from different areas, which seeks to ensure the best solution for each case presented. They believe in the power of the experience that elevates the banal to the poetic and every day to the sublime. Their work seeks the creation of experiences through the elements, and thus with themselves.

Its mission is based on the creation of "architectural pieces", specialized in housing, services, and mixed-use architecture, is in reconstruction and renovation. Fighting for sustainability and cultural values, they are not looking for 'fashions' but what is supposed to be timeless quality.

It's not just a matter of thinking outside the box, they have to try, try, and try again. They feel the need to put everything we have into each new project and they do not seek approval, they seek perfection. They try to be brave enough to edit rather than keep adding and above all they are never afraid to push the boundaries because that is the only way to achieve such cumulative simplicity, lightness, and excellence that they once seemed unattainable, but now so widely admired.
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Published on: January 20, 2021
Cite: "Freeing up space. inStone by Atelier DRK " METALOCUS. Accessed
<https://www.metalocus.es/en/news/freeing-space-instone-atelier-drk> ISSN 1139-6415
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