Making the right choice often comes down to a gut feeling. This is a truth Ana Fortin knows well. “I can’t just choose something because I need something,” says the Paris-born sales manager, who has lived in Lisbon since she was a child. “I would prefer to eat on the floor than have the wrong table.”

Ana’s house, which she shares with her 10-year-old daughter, Madalena, wears her choices like a coat of arms. Her taste tends toward midcentury modern, with bold twists, like the graphic terrazzo tiles in her kitchen and bath and the pin-striped parasol in her backyard. She commissioned a stately round dining table from Portuguese designer Tomaz Viana and paired it with a set of organic Hiroshima chairs by Naoto Fukasawa for Maruni. When Ana needed an outdoor shower for her back garden and pool, she ordered three options to inspect for herself; when they weren’t what she envisioned, she sent them back one at a time. Fortunately, a fourth fit the bill.

But her intuition—which strikes her when she knows something is just right—goes deeper than decorations. When Ana first visited her property in 2014, the plot of land bore only the uninhabitable ruins of two houses. Still, she just knew that it was the right spot for her home. And when she met with the team at Fala Atelier, she knew the firm was the right one to build it because it’s known for taking big swings with its designs.

Led by Ahmed Belkhodja, Filipe Magalhães, Lera Samovich, and Ana Luisa Soares, the Porto-based studio specializes in “giving stupid answers to logical questions,” as Magalhães told Dwell in 2022. Its work is equally playful and pragmatic.

“At times I was afraid because I was used to everything being very simple, but I feel so well here—it’s flowing, it’s playful, it’s unique and distinct.”
—Ana Fortin, resident

Blocky colors and outsize shapes draw attention to the studio’s designs but also serve a purpose. The conical teal range hood in Ana’s kitchen, the chunky black-and-white chimneys, the stripes repeated across kitchen cabinets, window shutters, and storage cupboards—these features add motion and scale to the modest home by guiding the eye from floor to ceiling, making it feel much larger.

Working with Fala is as fun as its creations, Ana says: “Their energy and passion are contagious.” That attitude came in handy when planning the project proved to be something of an endurance test. Architects working in Portugal face plenty of red tape, which maintains the character of the nation’s cities. The capital is no exception. In fact, Magalhães says, “Lisbon is actually the slowest and most bureaucratic and complicated municipality in the country.” These regulatory processes help preserve the city’s feel even as Americans and others relocate here in droves; they are especially important in Belém, a historic district on the western edge of the city, where Ana lives, but also limit an architect’s options. Restrictions constrain building size, committees rigorously regulate street-facing facades, and there are only a few options allowed for roof tiles and shingles. Magalhães says that for homeowners it can feel as if there is always some new application and wait period to complete. Though Ana purchased the plot in 2014, she didn’t move into her new home until June 2022.

To deal with some of the regulations, Fala got creative. For the front facade, the studio set lighter marble lozenges against darker triangles for a striking geometric motif. But that was unusual, so in the proposal, the facade was drawn very simply and labeled just “wood” and “stone”—a bureaucrat’s unobjectionable dream. “The front on the street today reflects Oswald Mathias Ungers,” Magalhães says, referencing the cerebral 20th-century German architect. “The drawings we submitted suggested sad social housing.

“You could make rules and regulations that push municipal bureaucrats and architects to work together on the best solution for a problem,” he continues. But in his opinion, the existing building-approval process pits parties against each other. It’s a lose-lose situation and one in which it’s up to architects to advocate for their clients and for architecture itself, Magalhães says. “The municipality doesn’t care if Ana has a nice house. And they definitely don’t care if it’s good architecture.”

“It’s an additive house. It’s about the tiny moments, ideas, problems, and solutions that kept adding and adding to it.”
—Filipe Magalhães, architect

Magalhães points out that after clearing regional hurdles for a decade, Fala has gained a tactical edge that sets the studio apart even from more established architects around the world. He notes that while some firms maintain a fleet of offices in many countries, most steer clear of Portuguese projects. There’s a steep learning curve here, and many architects aren’t cut out for the regulatory and design challenges. “It’s like we have to speak five languages, and there’s one we care a lot about: the architectural one,” he says. “Luckily, with Ana, we could talk about architecture.”

The designers worried Ana might shy away from their more outspoken propositions, like the tall semicircular doors or the postmodern marble back facade, but Ana was a fan, and her own taste complemented the head-turning shapes and colors. Ana wanted a warm wood for the open living room on the ground floor; Fala proposed accenting the pine flooring with dark walnut tiles—“chocolate sprinkles,” according to Magalhães. Ana wanted a tub for the secondary bathroom; unsatisfied with the available options, Fala bought a book on the ergonomics of chairs and built a tub for her instead with the terrazzo tiles she’d chosen for the kitchen.

The result is a family home that glows with life across its three floors. The ground floor feels rooted, sloping gently up toward the wide-open windows that frame the backyard. The second floor is cozy, with the primary bedroom and both secondary bedrooms—a guest room and a room for Ana’s daughter—branching off a central volume. The top floor is a celebration: Guests enter it from a spiral staircase and move through Ana’s small home office before reaching the marble-lined balcony with views across all of Lisbon. It’s not what Ana might have imagined when she purchased the run-down plot nine years ago, but in the end, it feels just right.

Project Credits:

Architect of Record: Fala Atelier

Builder: OGC

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