A fireman's pole lets children slide down between floors in this house that Aurora Arquitectos has created in Lisbon, Portugal.
The building that the house occupies is nestled along Bartolomeu Dias street, west of central Lisbon.

Although the structure had fallen into a state of almost complete ruin, it was purchased by a couple who wanted to establish a home where they could live for the foreseeable future and raise their three young children.
Aurora Arquitectos was tasked with carrying out the residential conversion.

"This is an upstream project in a time when the city has been gradually emptied from its inhabitants under the pressure of tourism and real estate speculation," said the practice.
"This is a project of resistance since it grows from the desire of a family wanting to remain in its own neighbourhood."
The original building was two storeys and measured just 60 square metres.
As Aurora Arquitectos had to reconstruct nearly the entire building, it decided to extend the structure to create three more storeys and an extra 169 square metres of space.
The new portion of the building has been painted bright white.

"The family lived for some years in the Netherlands in a typical townhouse, known as a typology that has a vertical distribution of the program, so we can also say that influenced the design process," the practice explained to Dezeen.

Inside, the traditional arrangement of rooms has been reversed. The sleeping quarters are o...