Tea at Trianon: An Apartment in Lisbon

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, April 17, 2021

An Apartment in Lisbon

From ArchDaily:

When transformed into an individual fraction of housing, the apartment was occupied by Pedro Espirito Santo known as the host of the best parties and dinners in Lisbon, and the 11 rooms served this purpose perfectly. In 2019 the apartment acquired a new owner, with a clear family structure. The intervention program in the space was based on the maintenance, conservation, and restoration of all the architectural heritage of the property, but adapting it to family needs - from 1 bathroom we now have 6 independent bathrooms.
All the work was based on the premise that the interventions should be silent enough not to be noticed, or to dispute the attention for the pre-existing. If the recovery works were to be silent in the form and choice of materials, the interior design project chose a careful selection of timeless design pieces - as if from the height of 18th-century art we could in the same space and suddenly travel to what is best produced in 21st-century design. History is written today in a different language. With other objects, and arguments even if the principle remains present: a house to live and be lived in. (Read more.)