Casa Acreditar Lisboa | ALA.rquitectos

The Casa Acreditar in Lisbon is a unique project, with a very specific program, aimed at an equally special group of users. This house was designed to accommodate children and adolescents who, during their cancer treatments, need a temporary home for themselves and their families.
The main premise of the project was to create a space that would go beyond the function of temporary accommodation, assuming itself as a "home away from home".
The common areas were designed to encourage meeting and socializing, while the private spaces ensure the seclusion and privacy of each family unit. Natural light, warm materials and domestic-scale elements were strategic to reinforce the feeling of familiarity.
When we began this exercise, we were faced with the challenge of expanding the house that had already been operating since 2002 at no. 73 Rua Professor Lima Basto. At the time, this building accommodated a total of 12 children. In addition to the 12 bedrooms, it had a whole program of common areas adapted to the program in question. This building also housed Acreditar's offices and spaces for volunteers.

After analyzing the built project of Casa Acreditar in Lisbon, and through observing how the spaces functioned and how families, volunteers and employees used them, we concluded that one of the essential points for this expansion would be that the connection between the two buildings would not be noticeable to their users, without there being any vertical transition element, as this would always be a barrier to the dynamics of the House.

In this way, we equalized the elevation of the ground floor of building no. 71 to that of building no. 73, and took advantage of a higher ceiling in the new building. On this floor we located the common areas, the program intended for use by families. This increase in ceiling height allowed these spaces to have a more noble scale, reinforced by the increase in the size of the spans in height.