Suspenso, the events organisation company that manages the Suspenso Concept Venue on Rua de Santiago in Alfama, has opened the Suspenso Rooftop, a “new, different space with a lot of potential”.
Suspenso Rooftop, on Rua Alexandre Herculano, next to Marquês de Pombal, in Lisbon, has around 160 square metres, a bar with a lounge area, a catering support room, adjacent meeting rooms and balconies with tables and chairs and views of the Seven Hills.
“The aim with this space, with the rooftop, is to organise different events,” João Viegas, Suspenso’s marketing director, told Event Point during the rooftop’s inauguration.
“Our mother space is the Suspenso Concept Venue, on Rua de Santiago, in Alfama,” recalled the marketing director, explaining that “Suspenso is the former Santiago Alquimista, a more event/party space, with a larger capacity, 900 square metres divided between the three rooms, a completely different concept to this one.” For the rooftop, the concept is “to bring more premium events, smaller groups, to this area”, and “we’re talking about around 100 people seated and between 200 and 200 or so standing”.
For 2024, said João Viegas, “we expect to hold 50 or 60 events”, and it’s important to “realise the potential of the space” in the corporate market. “We can hold a meeting, a dinner, a party, launch a new product, use the versatility of the space itself,” he said, adding that “the location is very good, also with easy access, with two very large parks nearby,” referring to Alexandre Herculano and Castilho.
At Suspenso Concept Venue, in Alfama, “our market is mostly foreign,” but it also varies according to the time of year, “at Christmas we end up working with 99 per cent Portuguese clients for Christmas events,” he said. For the rooftop, the expectation “is that it will be the national client, the national companies, that will put the space on the market”, despite the fact that it is already among Suspenso’s other options on the website, which ends up creating a “dynamic of the client coming directly”.
As far as staff are concerned, João Viegas is responsible for the two spaces, this one and the one in Alfama, and when Suspenso realises the rooftop’s position in the market, they should hire more staff.
The rooftop space “belongs to Ando Living, which is a luxury real estate company in Lisbon,” explained Viegas, adding that “they created this space as their showroom and that was it, and suddenly they felt that the space could have a slightly different life, so the challenge came for us to join them in organising events.”
Charlotte Lecarpentier, Ando Living’s marketing director, spoke at the opening ceremony, explaining Ando’s operations in Lisbon, Porto and Istanbul, particularly in the area of accommodation, and the curiosity of the fact that it is on this rooftop that the deeds for the purchase of Ando Living flats are signed.
Pedro Fidalgo, director of Suspenso, emphasised that “Suspenso was the idea of one man, Vincent Chicha, who was the great creator, motivator and financier”. At the time, “the idea was to create a very versatile venue concept, so we have little decoration and we try to have a neutral, more industrial space” in the Alfama area.
For the future, Suspenso’s director emphasised that as well as a “very industrial space, here we have a rooftop, and soon we hope to have two more locations that are complementary”.
Text: João Canto | Photo: João Lourenço | Source: Event Point
