Canidelo Porto

The Canidelo project is the rehabilitation and reconstruction of a historic granite ruin on Rua do Barroco in Canidelo, Vila Nova de Gaia — a coastal municipality on the south bank of the Douro estuary facing Porto. The building, a traditional granite compound with two-storey ochre-rendered walls and a collapsed terracotta roof, was acquired from its sale as a ruin and commissioned for residential conversion by Joana Margarida Oliveira Cardoso. Construction began in February 2021, with active demolition and structural intervention through September and October 2021, and execution-phase documentation formalised in June 2022. The project was completed. Architecture was carried out under the licensed Portuguese architect Jose Pimenta Dias da Silva, with Rise Studio Porto providing concept direction and interior design.

The design strategy preserves the historic granite masonry walls as the primary spatial and structural envelope, inserting contemporary volumes within and above the retained shell. The existing stone is not concealed or imitated: its rough-hewn character and authentic material weight are the architectural proposition. Into this container, exposed red-painted steel I-beams are introduced as the signature structural element, spanning between the retained granite walls to carry new floor and roof structures. The contrast between the ancient stone and the industrial red steel is deliberate and legible — two different material times held in dialogue.

The programme is organised into three distinct zones distributed across the irregular historic footprint: Zone A contains the kitchen and living areas; Zone B accommodates two bedrooms and a bathroom; Zone C provides the carport. Each zone has its own character: Zone A under a contemporary flat roof with exposed red steel beams achieves a 3.22 metre ceiling height in the living and kitchen volume, while Zone B retains a pitched terracotta roof over the bedroom wing, preserving the traditional scale and material identity of the original building silhouette. This roof differentiation — flat over living, pitched over sleeping — reads as a programmatic register on the facade and in section.

The demolition photographs document the building archaeology revealed during the October 2021 intervention: a vivid blue-painted room discovered beneath later plaster layers, multiple generations of finish applied to the granite masonry, collapsed timber roof structure, and stone rubble filling the interior. These layers record a domestic history accumulated within the walls — the building had been inhabited, adapted, and eventually abandoned over multiple decades before this rehabilitation.