Home > Insider > A10 Insider > Café-bar, Lisbon

Café-bar, Lisbon

A coffee with a view

LISBON (PT) - 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 premises 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 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…