Inside A Portuguese Home With Pantone’s Colour of the Year 2020 ♦ American brand Pantone has announced that the Colour of the Year 2020 is Classic Blue, also known as Pantone 19-4052! Suggestive of the sky at dusk, the reassuring qualities of the thought-provoking Pantone 19-4052 Classic Blue highlight our desire for a dependable and stable foundation on which to build as we cross the threshold into a new era. Just in time for this amazing announcement, Secrets From Portugal takes you inside a home in Porto that has a Classic Blue theme. We also bring you some extra secrets that must keep reading to find out!
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Portuguese architecture studio Fala Atelier has transformed an old house in Porto into five studio apartments that feature matching dark blue shutters and a facade patterned with blue and red tiles. The architects preserved the building’s thick granite walls, but removed the facade’s ornate tiling, replacing it with a more abstract design of irregular blue and red shapes on a white background. Corresponding blue and red doors lead off the street into the apartment block.
Inside, five almost identically sized flats occupy the three floors. Each is fitted with Classic Blue plywood cabinetry, which can be used to conceal or reveal the kitchen, bathroom, storage and windows. This helps to create an uncluttered appearance in the single-room apartments. “The fragmented arrangement of small inner rooms was replaced with a sequence of almost identically dimensioned apartments,” said the architects. “Only upon a second look is the distinction between the five units understandable.”
This design varies only slightly between each home, to accommodate the geometry of the staircase, the windows and form of the roof. Strips of the grey-veined stone line a low sill below the windows and provide splashbacks in the kitchens. Small pieces of the same stone are set into the wooden floors to indicate the location of the kitchens behind their Classic Blue shutters. This stone outline varies between apartments, with a triangle providing the flooring for one kitchen and a semi-circle in another.
Fala Atelier has created a number of other compact living spaces in Lisbon. Among them are a garage conversion that now serves as a home for a young couple and their Fiat 500 car.
Extra Classic Blue Secrets
São Bento Rail Station
It’s been voted one of the world’s most beautiful railway stations. The outside is super-cool, in a Belle Epoque Parisian kind of way, but it’s the interiors that will really knock you out: the station lobby walls are covered with 20,000 decorative tiles, which took painter Jorge Colaço 11 years to complete, portraying scenes of Portuguese history, daily life and transportation (for the trainspotters). Catch a train from here to nearby towns such as Miramar (with its beautiful beaches and mansions), Braga or Guimarães. And if you miss your train, so what?
Burgau, Algarve
The small town of Burgau in Vila do Bispo can be named the Santorini of Portugal. Burgau has 288 inhabitants and a centuries-old fishing tradition. The references to this site go back to the 16th century and there are still the ruins of an ancient fort. The beach is neither big nor spacious. However, it has calm and transparent waters, Blue Flag for several years and is watched. The only hotel in the town is called Hotel Burgau and it is not difficult to find: it is located on a cliff overlooking the village and the ocean. Although not new, it has been recently renovated and the rooms have every comfort, including an empty minibar where you can store drinks and food at your leisure. It only serves breakfast and has a pool bar that ensures small meals.
