BFJ Arquitectos Requalifies 12,469 m² Lisbon School Heritage Complex

BFJ Arquitectos has completed the requalification and modernization of Santo António Primary School, a 12,469 m² complex in Lisbon dating to the early 1950s. The project, dated 2025, was led by Francisco Amaral Pólvora and José Amaral Pólvora. Fernando Guerra of FG+SG photographed the finished work.

The school's history anchors the design brief. Architect Inácio Peres Fernandes designed the complex in 1947. Construction followed in the early 1950s under the Plano dos Centenários (Centenary Plan), Portugal's state school-building programme. The building belongs to the urban model of the Alvalade neighbourhood, planned around the concept of the neighbourhood unit (a self-contained residential district with its own schools, shops and services).

The complex keeps most of its original features intact. It is officially recognised as representative heritage of the first phase of the Alvalade plan. That status constrained the architects' scope: modernize a protected mid-century ensemble without erasing its fabric.

What did the original 1947 plan get wrong for today?

Gender segregation shaped the school's original layout. Fernandes designed separate male and female sections, standard practice for 1947. The school now runs as a mixed-use operation, and those divisions no longer fit.

The clearest example is the cafeteria. The original scheme duplicated cafeteria spaces on two floors — one per gender section. That duplication made kitchen operations inefficient, the architects report. Consolidating and rationalizing food service was therefore a core driver of the modernization scope.

What does this change for heritage school stock?

The project shows how Lisbon's Centenary Plan schools can absorb programmatic change without demolition. These buildings are structurally durable, heritage-listed early examples of modern Portuguese school design, and functionally outdated in specific, traceable ways — duplicated kitchens, gendered circulation, split services.

Santo António's requalification treats those symptoms individually rather than replacing the whole. At 12,469 m², the complex is large for a primary school, which makes surgical modernization more cost-sensitive and more visible as a model. The 2025 completion adds a data point for municipalities weighing retrofit against new-build across Portugal's surviving Centenary Plan portfolio.

Further documentation from BFJ Arquitectos, with photography by Fernando Guerra | FG+SG, details the completed works.