Located in a
privileged green area of the city, overlooking the Rocha Conde de
Óbidos Cruise Terminal dock and the Tajo river, the Le Chat is one
of the newest café-bars of the Portuguese capital. Architects José
Maria Cumbre and Nuno Sousa Caetano, of the Lisbon-based Aspa atelier, are the designers of this 2011 Enor prizewinning project.
The main conceptual
idea behind the project was the development of a very light, almost
transparent, volume in order to preserve the existing open views. It
is not an ephemeral construction, but the premisses for the design
were almost the same. Completely built in metal and glass, the
structure is grounded in the terrace of an adjacent existing building
instead of in the garden itself. This project decision allowed the
enhancement of opportunities for greater views by elevating patrons
to the physical limit of the existing upper-city platform.
The small,
horizontal building is very simple and pure, configured of a
box-shape volume with soft round edges. The absence of hard angles or
marked corners helped to create a certain different look among the
other neighbouring constructions and to strengthen the desired image
of “lightness”. At night, a soft green light marks the
structure's presence in the landscape, helping its urban
identification.
The interior space
is completely white and clean. However, no particular effort was made
here: generic details were adopted and regular metallic furniture was
chosen. But it's perfectly understandable: the only important issue
here is the open view and nothing should disturb the precedence of
those multiple outside images, not even the place in
which you're seated...
which you're seated...
