Shop To Flat / Jose-studio

Architects: Jose-studio
Area: 50 m²
Year: 2024
Photography: Francisco Nogueira
Lead Architects: José Guimarães
City: Lisboa
Country: Portugal

Jose-studio’s Shop to Flat reimagines a disused commercial space in Lisbon’s Campo de Ourique district as a compact, light-filled dwelling. Measuring just 50 square meters, the project transforms a former storefront into a modest yet refined home centered on the subtle exchange between urban life and private retreat. A new red metal grid defines the façade, providing both protection and permeability, while a wall of glass blocks behind it diffuses natural light and maintains privacy. The intervention embraces the duality of openness and seclusion, reflecting Lisbon’s rhythm of street activity and domestic calm through a careful layering of thresholds and textures.

The transformation of a vacant shop into a serene residence in one of Lisbon’s most dynamic neighborhoods is a study in restraint and adaptability. In Shop to Flat, Jose-studio approached the project not as a simple renovation, but as an exploration of how architecture can mediate between the public and the private. The existing storefront, once a transparent interface for commerce, has been reinterpreted as a nuanced boundary for living.

At the street level, the introduction of a red metal grid immediately establishes a visual dialogue with the urban fabric. Its geometric precision contrasts with the surrounding stone façades, asserting a contemporary identity while respecting the rhythm of the street. The grid’s porous structure softens the notion of enclosure, inviting light and air while maintaining a sense of protection.

Just beyond, a wall of glass blocks refracts daylight into the compact interior, transforming the former shop’s limitations into spatial opportunities. The choice of material ensures privacy without sacrificing luminosity, turning what might have been a dark ground-floor dwelling into a luminous refuge. Inside, the modest floor area is organized with clarity and precision, emphasizing spatial fluidity and functional coherence.

The result is a domestic space that engages its context without retreating from it. Moments of everyday life unfold at the threshold — the client reading near the open door or pausing with a coffee — embodying the project’s central idea of coexistence between the city’s vibrancy and the home’s tranquility. In this quiet intervention, Jose-studio demonstrates how architecture can transform neglect into intimacy, offering a renewed model for small-scale urban living in Lisbon.