The Punt Premises

An innovative model of adaptive heritage reuse: rather than turn a 19th century fisherman house into a museum of the past, it becomes a working place of making and gathering — bridging past and future.

An open house

The site includes a 19th-century family house, two fisherman’s lofts, a fishing stage, and a new floating dock — all donated in 2015 and restored by Shorefast.

Client
Shorefast

Year
2018-2019

Collaborator
Kingman Brewster

Documenting the process

Writing The Punt Premises of Fogo Island helped me uncover how island families lived from the sea prior to the commercial fishing era and the Cod Moratorium of 1992. I later printed selected images from the archive on cotton canvas and installed them as retractable window blinds as an interactive art installation.

Our design philosophy

Our approach to renovating Punt Premises is rooted in care for the stories already held within its walls. Rather than erasing the traces of time, we chose to preserve and reveal them—allowing the building’s layers of history to coexist with new additions.

Materiality

Preserve layers of history in the building fabric rather than reverting to one fixed moment in time.

New interventions are woven into the old structure so the building evolves in time, rather than becoming fossilised.

Place-based design

What do we seek in objects, besides their ability to serve a purpose? Can objects express emotion, memory, or identity?

Inspired by the vernacular architecture of Fogo Island, I infused the design of several objects for Punt Premises with playful, flowing curves.