extrastudio Paints an 1893 Lisbon House Ultramarine and Cuts It Open into a Triple-Height Home

The house that extrastudio inherited in Marvila was modest: a single-storey dwelling built in 1893 in a district that has been farmland, then Lisbon's industrial engine, and is now a mix of warehouses turned studios and galleries. The firm extended it into a 251 m² home that rises behind its original street door. It is the first of three residences the studio groups under the name casas poveras, poverty houses. The name is a provocation. The series strips a house down to essentials during a period of uncertainty, but it does not shrink its spatial ambition to match.

What makes Blue House worth your attention is a refusal to separate old from new. The original fabric and the extension carry identical finishes, so the two eras show only in silhouette and in the grain of the materials. Many renovations frame the historic shell as a relic or contrast it with a crisp addition. extrastudio does neither. It treats the 1893 house as an artefact whose imperfections are a record of daily life, then lets the new work absorb that record rather than comment on it.

A Facade That Had to Be Finished in One Day

The ultramarine lime plaster that wraps the whole exterior volume was not a branding choice. The team found the colour in the existing building and carried it forward. The pigment is unstable, so each facade had to be plastered in a single day to avoid seams and patch repairs. That constraint turns a coat of paint into a construction event, and you can read it in the result: continuous, slightly mottled surfaces with no visible joints between campaigns. Under Lisbon's overcast light, the blue settles toward grey, which helps the house sit quietly between its pink neighbour and the red brick next door.

At street level, the cobbled pavement, the original 1893 door and the garage panels keep the ground plane tied to the neighbourhood. Elements from the old facades were removed, restored and set back into the new ones. Above, the openings read as cut-outs, including a triangular recess in the gable, so the building looks carved out of its plaster mass rather than assembled from parts.

The Garden Side: Pool, Lemon Tree, Sliding Glass

The rear is where the house relaxes. A black-edged pool doubles as a reflecting surface, a lemon tree anchors the corner, and the ground floor opens through glass sliding doors so the interior floor plane runs out toward steps and planting. The gable repeats the street profile, but here the base dissolves into glazing, and the heavy plaster volume appears to rest on light.

The extension changed both the exterior form and the side passage that leads to the garden. That passage matters on a plot this narrow, because it lets the garden function as a destination rather than a leftover strip behind the building.

Large Cuts Through a Narrow Volume

extrastudio describes the new work as a sequence of large spatial cuts, and the photographs support that description. A double-height living room with a stone fireplace and stacked logs opens to a gravel courtyard. A slot of roof terrace slips between pitched walls. A narrow skylight drags daylight down grey walls beneath a sloping ceiling. Sources also note a triple-height space within the interior. Instead of dividing the volume into neat floors, the cuts link levels visually and let light reach deep into a compact footprint.

This is where the casas poveras idea pays off. The palette is sparse and the finishes are cheap, yet the section is generous. The budget went into volume and light rather than surface.

A Scratch Coat Promoted to Finish

Inside, the walls stop at a gray plaster scratch coat, the layer that normally sits hidden beneath a final skim. The team discovered it during construction and decided to keep it as an inexpensive finish. Next to it sit stainless steel kitchen cabinets, an oak island, exposed beams overhead and herringbone timber floors running up to a small light well. The mix is utilitarian, but it does not look stark, because each material has visible texture and none is polished into anonymity.

Leaving finishes, textures and colours open until construction is a risky way to run a project. Here those decisions were made on site with the craftsmen and the clients, and the scratch coat shows why that can work: some of the best options only appear once the wall is in front of you.

Bathrooms as Quiet Thresholds

The bathrooms use terrazzo floors, dark stone basins and tall pale timber doors. They are among the more refined surfaces in the house, yet they stay within the same restrained range. A window at the end of one corridor frames a garden tree, so even the service spaces keep a line of sight to the outdoors. The round mirror and black vanity add weight without breaking the calm grey envelope.

Plans and Drawings

The site plan places the narrow plot between a curving road and two railway lines, a reminder that Marvila is bounded by rail and river. The plans read as a long strip: house at the street, courtyard in the middle, garden and oval pool at the back. The upper levels pack kitchen, stair, bathrooms, bedrooms and storage walls into a tight volume, with a terrace facing the street.

The long section is the most informative drawing in the set. It shows the house stepping down through the courtyard to a sunken rear garden, and it makes the spatial cuts legible as one continuous move. The solid black elevations reduce both gables to layered silhouettes, which is also how the project asks you to tell old from new.

Why This Project Matters

Blue House argues that austerity does not have to mean smaller spaces. By spending on section and saving on surface, extrastudio produced a home whose spatial experience goes well beyond its finish budget. The single-day plastering, the reclaimed facade elements and the scratch coat kept as a finish are all low-cost decisions, but each one depends on attention, timing and craft.

The project also offers a useful model for working with modest historic fabric. Instead of framing the 1893 house behind glass or contrasting it with a new insertion, the studio lets both eras share one skin and one colour, and leaves form and texture to tell them apart. In a district where heritage is often reduced to a backdrop, that is a more honest way to carry a building forward. We will be watching how the next two casas poveras develop the idea.

Blue House by extrastudio, Marvila, Lisbon, Portugal. Area: 251 m².

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