Lisbon Apartment with Champion Corridor Design by Aurora Arquitectos.

Mostly the idea of a super long corridor appeals to a kid. Particularly a kid stuck inside when it’s rainy… Ride your bike up it. Play skittles. Kick a ball. Smash a game of backyard cricket. Frankly the options are endless. The thing however with super long corridors, is that they are very tricky to get right. At least in an aesthetic sense. It is hard to make a super long corridor, worthy of a decent javelin throw, look sexy. After all, a corridor is by its very nature a rectangle with doors coming off it, hardly what one might term an inspiring space. But not so in this masterpiece of world-class corridor design.

The apartment, located on the top floor of a 1970’s building in Lisbon was designed by Portuguese studio Aurora Arquitectos. The design of the apartment was primarily focused on achieving a synthesis between a work area and a domestic one. Part of the concept behind the super long corridor was the capacity not only to redesign the original apartment where the space planning had been left somewhat to be desired, but also to capitalise on delineating the space between the new office layout and the residential one.

“The original apartment was characterized by poor construction and spatial quality. In particular, the corridor that organizes the entire housing program was too long and dim,” said the architects.

The corridor design is a stand out in this space because of the punctuation of the ceiling light-wells that dissect the axis of the corridor at the doorway junctions. These oh-so-simple light-wells present as beautifully articulated timber panels that are gently angled towards the roofline, like finely crafted geometric boxes with milky white panels pouring light into the corridor below. In some areas, the timber pinewood skylights meet pinewood angled walls that morph into simple geometric door jamb details, reinforcing the statement of passing through a threshold. In other areas, the pinewood skylights meet a simple textured white wall, the contrast in colour and materials again encouraging the user to enjoy the simple but strong detailing of the lightbox above. Rapidly this corridor becomes a place of interesting, unfolding elements. To its credit, it is far more than any boring rectangle. In fact the architects wanted it to play different roles for the client – to be both a space to use physically, that is for their young grandchild to enjoy playing in and also, to act as a streetscape, a path of travel to work.

“The corridor can be the space for the grandchild to ride a tricycle and, at the same time, the shortest commute to work,” said the architects.

The library was the main focus for the work area in the design, along with the office. Both are finished in pinewood joinery and white textured walls. The joinery, the timber herringbone flooring and the walls are all finished in the same timber. Clever little details such as the bench with its high back, offer a reading ledge, a place to put books and lay them out under a funnelled light-well. Not only does this joinery serve the purpose of seating but the proportions of the light-well to the seating acts as a part-height wall, continuing the visual integration of the corridor.

“With this awareness, the client’s commission focused on creating an office plus a library for its vast collection of books and to rehabilitate the corridor as a key element to solve the diptych workspace and housing space. After the intervention, new elements appear such as the central furniture to put books, which simultaneously serves as a bench for the library, a light table and a cabinet, dividing and generating the space around it,” said the architects.

The detailing is exquisite, from the sliding door that encloses the office, with its intricate door pull detail, to the interplay between the herringbone timber floor of the ‘commercial’ space, to the marble herringbone flooring which marks the visual transition into the residential space. A zigzag brass edging strip details the join between the two flooring materials. Marble runs throughout the residential side, along with the signature light-wells used to illuminate the aforementioned corridor.

“The distance, both physical and psychological, between these two distinct programs is easily mistaken as a problem of separation. In this case, it is compatibilization we sought, achieved through the creation of buffer zones punctuated by light-wells and the use of different materials for the floor, which alternates between the softness of the pinewood and the resistance of the lioz marble,” said the architects.

This apartment is a finely moderated composition of materials, layout and interplay of light. And what one shouldn’t overlook is that one of the things it achieves best is the delivery of very different space planning requirements – a home that needs to feel warm with a workspace that not only needs to be functional, but beautiful too.