KEMA Studio Turns a Derelict Marvila Attic into a 60 m² Lighthouse Apartment Above Lisbon

Marvila is one of Lisbon's oldest industrial and working-class districts, a riverside stretch once known as Vila do Mar that is now in the middle of a long-delayed regeneration. At the top of one of its buildings, KEMA Studio, led by Eliza Borkowska and Magdalena Czapluk, took on an attic most people would have written off. The roof was failing, the interior was beyond saving, and the space was not legally or practically habitable. Between 2019 and 2021 the studio kept only the floor structure and the gable walls, rebuilt everything else, and produced a home of roughly 60 square meters.

What interests us is not the before-and-after drama, though there is plenty of it. The interest lies in how few moves the plan needs. Instead of dividing a low, sloping attic into small rooms, KEMA placed the private functions inside freestanding volumes that never touch the roof. The roof stays one continuous surface, punctured by light, and the living area is simply the space left around the boxes. The architects call the result a lighthouse: a shelter at the top of the building that looks out to the city, the sky and the Tagus. For once the metaphor actually explains the section.

A Lighthouse Built on Two Gable Walls

Because the whole roof had to go, the studio could design the new one around daylight rather than work around old rafters. Four skylights, two dormers and a series of thin glazed strips now bring light into the attic from several angles. The long view down the corridor shows the benefit: light arrives at the far end through the roof windows, crosses the oak floor and pulls you down the length of the room.

The glazed strips are the quieter decision and the smarter one. They deliver indirect light into the corners a skylight cannot reach, so the low eaves read as soft edges instead of dark pockets. In a 60 square meter attic, that difference is how the space feels larger than it measures.

One Wall That Does Everything

Along the gable runs a ribbed timber wall that works as storage, wardrobe and backdrop at once. Doors disappear into the fluting, so the wardrobe under the sloping roof window and the cupboards beside the corridor all present the same calm surface. You only see the storage when you open it.

The ribbing matters beyond the look. Vertical grooves catch raking light from the skylights and turn a flat run of cabinetry into something with shadow and depth. Small attics often have cheap built-in storage as their weak point; here it carries the interior.

A Kitchen That Closes Like a Cabinet

The kitchen sits inside the box volume. With the timber doors folded open, a cooktop and extractor hood appear; with them closed, the wall reads as furniture again. The round oak table and black chairs sit directly under a skylight, so the dining spot ends up as the brightest point in the flat.

We think this is the right priority for a one-person or two-person attic. Cooking needs a few square meters for a short time each day, and eating and gathering need good light. KEMA gives the light to the table and lets the kitchen close away when it is not in use.

Seats Carved Out of the Storage

Parts of the timber volume have been cut away to make niches, and the most generous of them becomes a built-in daybed and window seat with a plywood frame. It sits right next to an openable roof window, so a resident can lean out on the sill and look over the rooftops toward the river. A small desk at another window follows the same logic: every opening in the roof has a place to sit beside it.

The lighthouse idea is easiest to feel here. The seat is enclosed on three sides by timber and open on the fourth to the sky. It works as both refuge and lookout, the two qualities that make a good attic room.

The White Box Holds the Private Rooms

Opposite the timber wall stands a white volume with flush doors that contains the private rooms, including a full bathroom with industrial touches. It stops short of the roof, and that gap is the whole point. Because the box never meets the slope, the ceiling continues over it and the attic still reads as a single room, even with a bathroom and dressing area inside.

Hidden doors and flush panels keep the box abstract. Against the warm ribbed timber, the white surface steps back, and a trailing pothos is about the only thing interrupting it.

Arriving by a New Stair

The old stair was replaced, and redrawing its geometry is what made room for a private entrance and a proper bathroom. The new flight, in pale plaster, rises toward a door and a round wall lamp while sunlight cuts across the walls. At the top, a glass-railed opening keeps the stairwell from closing off the floor, and a white sliding wardrobe uses the space beside it.

Entry sequences in attic conversions usually end up as leftover space. Here the stair is the first view of the light above, a brief climb from the shade of the building into the brightest floor.

Why This Project Matters

Lisbon, like most European capitals, has a large stock of neglected roof space sitting above occupied buildings. Marvila Attic shows how to turn that space into housing without any change to the building's footprint. Keep what is sound, replace what is not, and spend the design effort on the roof, because an attic's quality comes from the roof. The material palette of fiber cement, colored wood fiber panels, plywood, metal, brick tiles and timber is modest and chosen for durability and lower impact, not for display.

The broader lesson concerns the plan. Two volumes, one timber and one white, do the work that partition walls would normally do, and they leave the roof free to be one continuous, light-filled surface. For a district that is rethinking what its working-class fabric can become, a small, calm home at the top of an old building with a view of the river is a better model of regeneration than another conspicuous new tower.

Marvila Attic by KEMA Studio (Eliza Borkowska and Magdalena Czapluk), Lisbon, Portugal. Area: approx. 60 m². Completed: 2021. Photography: Alexander Bogorodskiy.

About the Studio

Share Your Own Work on uni.xyz

If projects like this are the kind of work you want to make, uni.xyz is a place to publish your own, find collaborators, and enter design competitions.